Slavery and the Forensic Theatricality of Human Rights in the Spanish Empire: Man or Citizen? (Palgrave Studies in Literature, Culture and Human Rights) 3031315308, 9783031315305

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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN LITERATURE, CULTURE AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Slavery and the Forensic Theatricality of Human Rights in the Spanish Empire Karen-Margrethe Simonsen

Palgrave Studies in Literature, Culture and Human Rights Series Editor

Alexandra S. Moore Binghamton University New York, NY, USA

This series demonstrates how cultural critique can inform understandings of human rights as normative instruments that may at once express forms of human flourishing and be complicit with violence and inequality. The series investigates the role of genre and the aesthetic in shaping cultures of both rights and harm. Essential to this work is an understanding of human rights as at once normative and dynamic, encompassing egregious violations as well as forms of immiseration that have not always registered in human rights terms.

Karen-Margrethe Simonsen

Slavery and the Forensic Theatricality of Human Rights in the Spanish Empire

Karen-Margrethe Simonsen School of Communication and Culture Aarhus University Aarhus, Denmark

ISSN 2524-8820     ISSN 2524-8839 (electronic) Palgrave Studies in Literature, Culture and Human Rights ISBN 978-3-031-31530-5    ISBN 978-3-031-31531-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31531-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit: SPCOLLECTION / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

A Note on Two Chapters

Two chapters have been printed in shorter and different versions before: Chapter 3: ‘Allegorical Theatricality: Horror and Human Rights in Bartolomé de Las Casas’ Atrocity Story A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies’ has been printed in a shorter version under the title ‘The Political Agency of Victims in Atrocity Tales by Bartolomé de las Casas: the Spanish Origin of Human Rights.’ Discursive Framings of Human Rights. Victimhood and Agency. Eds. Kjærgaard and Simonsen. Birkbeck Law Press, Taylor and Francis Group, 2017; pp.  26–42. I kindly thank Managing Editor Costas Douzinas and Birkbeck Law Press, Taylor and Francis Group for the permission to print a rewritten and edited version of this chapter. Chapter 5: ‘Tragicomic Theatricality: A Dual Vision of Rights in Lope de Vega’s The New World Discovered’ has been printed in a different and much shorter version with the title ‘Natural Rights and Power in the Spanish Comedia after the Conquest’ in The Routledge Companion to Literature and Human Rights. Eds. Sophia A. McClennen and Alexandra Schultheis Moore. Vol. 1, Abingdon/New York: Routledge/Taylor and Francis Group, 2016; pp.  279–288. I kindly thank the editors Sophia A. McClennen and Alexandra Schultheis Moore and Routledge for permission to print this rewritten and edited version.

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Acknowledgments

No book is one person’s work alone. This book has been cooking for a long time, and I am deeply indebted to the work and support of friends and scholars from a wide range of academic contexts. I wish to thank all the generous colleagues who have inspired and helped me in the process. Without them this book would not have been possible. A special and warm thanks to Frits Andersen for believing in this project at an early stage and for supporting it to the end, for giving valuable and visionary feedback on everything whenever it was needed. Thanks to Helle Porsdam, Christian Axboe Nielsen, Hans Lauge Hansen and Jakob Ladegaard for supporting and giving feedback on initial ideas, proposals and draft chapters of the book. Thanks to colleagues in the research group Reading Slavery and within the Center for the Study of the Literatures and Cultures of Slavery: Mads Anders Baggesgaard, Lotte Pelckmans, Jonas Ross Kjærgaard, Anne Green Munk, Stephanie Volder, Sine Jensen Smed, Kofi Anyidoho, William Nsuiban Gmayo, Emmanuel Saboro, Helen Atawube Yitah and collaborative partners, especially Madeleine Dobie and Myriam Cottias for sharing their thoughts on matters related to slavery and for feedback and collaboration on conferences and publications on slavery, literature and human rights. Thanks to all the colleagues in the Center for Early Modern Studies, especially Edward Alan Payne, Gordon McMullan, Anne Sophie Haahr Refskou, Lisbet Tarp, Annelis Kuhlmann, Mikkel-Theis Paulsen, Laura Thomasen, and collaborative partners Sofie Kluge, and Anne Fastrup. Thanks to all the colleagues at Comparative Literature, Aarhus University: (apart from those mentioned above): Lis Møller, Tore Rye Andersen, vii

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Svend Erik Larsen, Franciscka Ursula Gabriele Bergman, Marianne Ping Huang, Mads Rosendahl Thomsen, Nina Christensen, Sarah Mygind, Sebastian Egholm Lund, Sebastian Ørtoft Rasmussen, Asmaa Muhammad Farrag Hassaneen, Lea Grosen Jørgensen, Per Dahl, and from Aesthetics and Culture: Jacob Lund and Birgit Eriksson. They have all generously responded on ideas and shared their thoughts on different parts of the project. Thanks for the inspiration and invaluable academic exchange and collaboration on literature and human rights within the Scandinavian, European and International Networks on law and literature. A special thanks to Joseph Slaughter, Richard Weisberg, Alexandra Schultheis Moore, Elisabeth Swanson Goldberg, Costas Douzinas, Jeanne Gaakeer, Greta Olson, Daniela Carpi, Ditlev Tamm, Steen Schaumburg-Müller, Leif Dahlberg, Thomas Elholm, Panu Minkkinen, Ari Hirvonen, Bjarne Markussen, and The Bergen School of Law and Literature: Arild Linneberg, Frode Helmich Pedersen, Bjørn Christer Ekeland and Johan Dragvoll for being an inspiration, for keeping the dialogues going on human rights and literature, and for facilitating and (co)hosting numerous conferences and symposia in Europe, and the United States, where I have been able to present parts of this book or ideas related to it. Thanks to the Danish Institute for Human Rights, especially Marie Juul Petersen, Hans Otto Sano and Steven L.B.  Jensen for keeping the interdisciplinary human rights network alive. A special thanks to Alexandra Schultheis Moore for creating the series on Literature, Culture and Human Rights at Palgrave Macmillan and Raghupathy Kalynaramen for useful editorial help and collaboration. Thanks to the anonymous readers who have made many helpful comments and suggestions. A huge thanks to Greta Olson, Marett Leiboff, and Fionnghuala Sweeney for their support. A warm thanks to Russell Dees for conscientious and thorough language editing. Thanks to Aarhus University Research Foundation for support to the preparation of the book, and to the Department of Comparative Literature, Aarhus University for giving me time to write it. A million thanks and love to my family: Iver, Simon, Frida, Johannes and Mathias, and friends who have given moral support and listened patiently during the years to many half-baked ideas. Thanks for reminding me that there is a world outside the books!

Contents

1 Introduction:  Slavery and the Forensic Theatricality of Human Rights in the Spanish Empire  1 Part I Slavery, Theatricality and Human Rights in the Spanish Empire  21 2 Slavery and Human Rights in the Spanish Empire 23 3 Allegorical  Theatricality: Horror and Human Rights in Bartolomé de Las Casas’ Atrocity Story A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies 63 Part II Comic Modes of Theatricality and Human Rights in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth Century Spain 107 4 Carnivalesque  Theatricality: Defeat, Revenge and Collective Rights in Micael de Carvajal’s Court of Death and the Tragedy of Atawallpa’s Death109 5 Tragicomic  Theatricality: Forensic Presentism and a Dual Vision of Rights in Lope de Vega’s The New World Discovered by Christopher Columbus167 ix

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Part III Tragic Modes of Theatricality and Human Rights in Nineteenth Century Cuba 207 6 Melodramatic  Theatricality: Tableaux of Natural Rights and Interracial Solidarity in Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda’s Sab209 7 Tragic  Theatricality: Vulnerability and Rights in Juan Francisco Manzano’s Autobiography of a Slave and Zafira249 8 Epilogue: Forensic Theatricality and Human Rights289 Index301

List of Figures

Fig. 3.1

Fig. 4.1 Fig. 4.2

Fig. 4.3

Fig. 6.1

Illustration by Théodore de Bry, published in France in 1598 in a Latin version of Las Casas’ Brevísima relación de la destruición de las Indias (B.d. Las Casas 1992d, 31). Orig. title Narratio regionum Indicarum per Hispanos quosdam devastattarum. Public Domain77 Michael Wolgemut The Dance of Death (1493), in the Nuremberg Chronicle of Hartmann Schedel. Public domain 130 ‘Córtanle la caveza a Atagualpa Inga’ ca. 1615 (Poma de Ayala 1980, 283). The picture is kindly provided by the Royal Danish Library, GKS 2232 kvart: Guaman Poma de Ayala, Nueva corónica y buen gobierno (c. 1615), page 390 [392] 151 ‘A Topa Amaro le cortan la caveza en el Cuzco’ ca. 1615 (Poma de Ayala 1980, 333) The picture is kindly provided by the Royal Danish Library, GKS 2232 kvart: Guaman Poma de Ayala, Nueva corónica y buen gobierno (c. 1615), page 451 [453]. Text in the picture: / Ynga Uana Cauri, maytam rinqui? Sapra aucanchiccho mana huchayocta concayquita cuchon? [Inka Wana Qawri, ¿adónde te has ido? ¿Es que nuestro enemigo perverso te va a cortar el cuello a ti, que eres inocente?] / en el Cuzco /] 153 Jean-Baptiste Greuze: A Girl with a Dead Canary, 1765. Scottish National Gallery. Public Domain. Wikimedia Commons 220

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Slavery and the Forensic Theatricality of Human Rights in the Spanish Empire

Forensics is, anyway, itself an aesthetic practice because it depends on both the modes and the means by which incidents are sensed, recorded, and presented. —Eyal Weizman, Forensic Architecture (Weizman 2010, 94)

In 2002, the Canadian poet-lawyer Marlene NourbeSe Philip decided to write some poems about the Zong massacre in which approximately 142 Africans were thrown overboard from the slave ship Zong in November 1781. She wanted to tell the story but realized she could not tell it—not just because of the immensity of the crime and the related trauma, nor just because the victims were anonymous and information about the crime was scarce. It was because the narration could not capture the complexity of the chaotic event. She dismissed the novel because it required “too much telling” (Philip 2008, 190). The brutal story of the murder of Africans, she said, “must be told by not telling—there is a mystery here—the mystery of evil […]” (Philip 2008, 190). Instead of “telling,” NourbeSe Philip tried to ‘exhume’ (or exagua) the dead and give them presence in her poetry. She created a modern example of forensic poetry: Zong! (2008).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 K.-M. Simonsen, Slavery and the Forensic Theatricality of Human Rights in the Spanish Empire, Palgrave Studies in Literature, Culture and Human Rights, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31531-2_1

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Like a forensic anthropologist, she was obsessed with digging out the bodies: I, too, want the bones. I come—albeit slowly—to the understanding that Zong! is hauntological; it is a work of haunting, a wake of sorts, where the spectres of the undead make themselves present. (Philip 2008, 201)

Forensic literature is a literature that endeavors to speak with the dead: like Hamlet, to address a skull or a ghost. It is dedicated to exposing the physical traces of crimes: the scars, the stains of blood, the torn tissue, but it is also a ghostly affair. It revives a dead past, blows life into it to make it speak to the present. One could say that it speaks to the dead, about the dead, on behalf of the dead. It awakens the dead so that they can ‘testify to’ the crime. As NourbeSe Philip says, “Zong! bears witness to the ‘resurfacing of the drowned and the oppressed’” (Philip 2008, 203). Though forensic literature is about facts and documentation, it also has a performative or even a theatrical dimension. Through material evidence and reimagination of the past, the dead come to life to accuse the perpetrators and appeal to the readers as a jury. In the case of Zong!, an accusation is raised against the shipowners, who thought they could kill 142 Africans and cash in the insurance money for lost cargo. The work makes explicit the crime and the circumstances of the crime and implicitly appeals to an audience to come to their own verdict about it. In the case of the Zong massacre, the perpetrators are dead, and the audience is historically removed from the events. But the audience is challenged to make their judgments for the sake of historical justice and future acts. Reading forensic literature is judging—about the past and the future. We live in an age of forensics. Not only do our TVs and cinemas overflow with forensic crime shows, and the crime novel is experiencing a veritable renaissance, forensics is also a dominating paradigm within international crime investigation. In their book from 2012 on Mengele’s Skull, Eyal Weizman and Thomas Keenan claimed that, already in the 1980s, we moved from the era of the witness, epitomized by the Eichmann trial in 1961, to the era of forensics, epitomized by the ‘trial’ on Mengele’s skull from 1985 onward. The trial on Mengele’s skull in the 1980s “inaugurated a new cultural sensibility, an ethics and a political aesthetics whose implications and influences quickly overflowed their boundaries of their initial forums” (Keenan and Weizman 2012, 13–14). Forensic

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anthropologists such as Clyde Snow became heroes in the international press; and, since then, forensic anthropology has widened its domain and has been joined by other areas of study such as forensic architecture, forensic aesthetics, forensic sociology, and so on (Frieze 2019, 7). Forensics is a science that investigates the most minute traces of a crime to answer one main question: What happened to the deceased? However, to the credit of Eyal Weizman and Thomas Keenan and one of the reasons it is possible to talk about a ‘forensic turn’ is that they understood forensics not only as a strict investigative procedure in the laboratory but as a technology of the senses that changes our view of the crime. Forensics, they argue, is deeply dependent on aesthetics: The making of facts […] depends on a delicate aesthetic balance, on new images made possible by new technologies, not only changing in front of our very eyes, but changing our very eyes,—affecting the way that we can see and comprehend things. Aesthetics, as the judgment of the senses, is what rearranges the field of options and their perceived likelihood and cuts through probability’s economy of calculations. (Keenan and Weizman 2012, 24)

Forensics is dependent on rhetoric, on arranging facts aesthetically so that they are convincing. Etymologically linked to the word ‘forensics’ is the word “forum,” which implies that the facts need to be presented in front of a group of people in a way that makes it possible for them to make judgments of the evidence. Forensics is not just a science about the facts of the crime; it is a rhetoric that presents these facts with the use of visual, textual, and auditory technologies so that they can be used as evidence in a forum. Forensic processes are “trials of the bones” (Keenan and Weizman 2012, 25). And though forensic literary texts such as NourbeSe Philip’s forensic poetry are not rehearsed in a courtroom, they are in their own way “trials of the bones.” They are occupied with all the details of the crime; they document the consequences of the crime for individuals or groups of individuals; and, as mentioned, they accuse the perpetrators and are addressed to a wider audience, who are expected to judge the evidence and the facts of the crime. All the works discussed in this book are forensic texts that follow the “who did what to whom model.” They are works about slavery and about violence related to slavery. They are about massacres, killings, and physical torture but also about the social death and stigma to which millions of

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people were subjected in America and in the transatlantic slave trade. Slavery is the most radical systemic oppression that has ever existed since it denies the rights of man at a very fundamental level: it eradicates a person’s humanity and his or her social status. To be a slave is to be excluded both as a human being and as a citizen—to be, in effect, dead to society. In ancient societies, slavery was seen as a substitute for death—most typically, for death in war, but Orlando Patterson writes: The condition of slavery did not absolve or erase the prospect of death. Slavery was not a pardon: it was, peculiarly, a conditional commutation. The execution was suspended only as long as the slave acquiesced in his powerlessness. The master was essentially a ransomer. What he bought or acquired was the slave’s life, and restraints on the master’s capacity wantonly to destroy his slave did not undermine his claim on that life. Because the slave had no socially recognized existence outside of his master, he became a social nonperson. (Patterson 2018, 5)

Radical dehumanization equals death, both physical and social death. Already in classical Greek, the word ‘slave’ referred to a “dominated thing, an animated instrument, a body with natural movement, but without its own reason, an existence entirely absorbed in another” (Henry Vallon, Histoire de l’eslavage de antiquité, 408; quoted in Patterson (Patterson 2018, 4)). The slave is not only subjugated by brutal force; he or she is reduced to the level of an inanimate instrument by the slaveowner. In this specific way, a slave may be counted as among the ‘living dead.’ He or she is a thing, a foreigner, an outsider with no legitimate claims in life. All slaves, no matter how integrated into social life they may be, share this zero point of human and political status. As Juan Francisco Manzano, who was a domestic slave in Cuba in the nineteenth century, says in a letter from 1835: “[…] I am a slave; and a slave is a dead being before his master.”1 Death is present in some form in all discourses on slavery. It is the point of departure for the forensic discourse on human rights: the claim that the slave has been ‘murdered’ by society. If we accept this basic premise, the demonstration of the cruelty of slavery is a forensic endeavor.

1  “[…] acuérdese su merced, cuando lea, que yo soy esclavo; y que el esclavo es un ser muerto ante su señor” (Luis 2007, 125).

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Slavery and Human Rights in the Spanish Empire The texts studied in this book are from the Spanish Empire from the beginning (sixteenth century) and the end (nineteenth century) of the colonial period when slavery was at the forefront of intellectual discussions. One of the interesting aspects of Spanish imperial history, its history of slavery and its contribution to the development of human rights, is its total lack of synchronicity with the general developments in the rest of Europe. Spain has a history of 400  years of slavery: it starts very early, influenced by medieval legacies, and continues long after other European nations have abolished slavery. In fact, in the last American colony of Spain (namely, Cuba), the institution of slavery thrived in a modern, rationalized way after the Haitian revolution. Spain developed quite early a radical human rights thinking; but, when slavery really established itself as a profitable institution in Cuba, Spain hesitated to move toward abolition. Though the Court at Cádiz in 1811 recommended the abolition of slavery and full citizenship for the enslaved Africans in Cuba (Galván Rodríguez 2014, 20–21), slavery continued and even grew in Cuba until 1886. It is easy to see the early and late periods of the Spanish Empire as disconnected, not least because early rights discussions were mainly centered on Native Americans and late rights discussions were focused on Africans who had been forced into slavery in America. However, as Rolena Adorno has pointed out, there are strong intellectual links between the early and later rights thinking (Adorno 2007, x, 80–81). The influence of the early human rights thinkers such as Francisco de Vitoria (1483–1546), Domingo de Soto (1491–1560), Bartolomé de Las Casas (1484–1566), and other Thomistic thinkers of the so-called Salamanca School can hardly be overestimated. In particular, Bartolomé de Las Casas has been a major influence on both the later independence movements and the abolitionist movement. Bartolomé de Las Casas will occupy a special place in this book—for several reasons. Though a controversial figure, his writings are exemplary in exposing many of the dilemmas of conceiving rights of the ‘other’ from inside an empire. All the literary works studied in this book are directly or indirectly influenced by Las Casas. His late works are the most radical denouncements of slavery that we have. Over the years and even today, he is a reference point in debates about the conquest and human rights. His small book Brevísima relación de la destruición de las Indias (A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies), which came out in 1552, was the

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Western world’s first atrocity story, and it was instrumental in creating the so-called black legend about the brutality of the Spanish Conquest. This legend has haunted and still haunts Spain. So much that a foundation (Fundación Civilización Hispánica) was created in 2018 to “wash off an image [of Spain] that was wrong and unjustified” (“errónea e injusta”), an image created by Bartolomé de Las Casas, who, in the words of the historian Stanley G. Payne, had been the “useful idiot” (“el tonto útil”) in giving Spain a bad image (El País, 29 January2018 (Hermoso 2018)). The controversy about Las Casas has often clouded our vision of his legal and political writings, but they are important, even for our human rights thinking today. In an environment of imperial expansion, political conflict, and religious dogmatism, Las Casas rethinks the rights of the Native Americans in opposition to the interests of the king and the pope and, in particular, the conquerors and new settlers of America. Human rights are negotiated between moral universalism and the emerging international law. They are both the rights of man and citizen. Before the development of modern liberalism, Las Casas develops natural rights based on individual freedom. However, under the inspiration by Thomas Aquinas, the individual is always understood as a social being who is part of a community and related to others within a web of social interrelation. Placing Las Casas at the center of the investigation focuses the discussion of slavery within its legalistic context. Contrary to other colonialisms, Spanish colonialism had a deeply legalistic form from the very beginning. This book will follow the ‘legalistic thread’ in Spanish colonialism and analyze works that treat the crimes of slavery as if they were addressing a court. All the works are in one way or another related to the colonial situation of economic exploitation, political domination, and shifting forms of racism. I am inspired by different parts of postcolonial theory, critical race theory, cultural studies, and historical studies of slavery. However, my book is an attempt to move the focus away from a discussion of the representation of the (racial) other and the place of the other within colonial and postcolonial societies to slavery as a crime. The forensic lens makes it possible to discuss the particularities of the crime, the aesthetic and rhetorical strategies used to denounce the crime, and the fora toward which these discourses are directed. The book argues that reading literary works about slavery through the lens of forensic aesthetics not only opens up the works to more nuanced readings, but it also sheds new light on the understanding of human rights

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within different political contexts. The Spanish case is particularly interesting because of its complexity, its many diverse texts, written in a mixture of genres, and its paradoxically modern understanding of human rights. The literary works that I analyze in this book all investigate the rights of the oppressed. What rights does the enslaved person have (or does he/ she ought to have) according to religion, politics, or law? How does the enslaved person, be it an enslaved Native American or an African, fit within or challenge the moral order of the Spanish Empire? There is a shifting dialogue between positive law and moral law, between national and international law, and between ius gentium (law of the nations) and ius inter gentes (law between nations). The texts are explorative, and the audience is meant not only to understand the specifics of a limited crime but also to understand the much wider system of oppression. They must feel the burdens of slavery, reflect on the rights of the enslaved, and come to a verdict about the system of oppression.

Forensic Theatricality Theatricality is a textual strategy intimately connected with the forensic aim of the text. The theater and the court share basic modes of demonstrating a conflict or a crime. Etymologically, the word ‘theater’ is connected with visuality. The word ‘thea’ is derived from the Greek word theatron which comes from thea (to ‘show’) or theâstai (to look on) (Fischer-Lichte et al. 2014, 7). Just like in the theater, the effort in law is to show and demonstrate the crime in all its factual complexity. However, as Marett Leiboff has argued, the Western tradition has been dominated by an “antitheatrical legality,” a resistance to materiality and the sensory in favor of abstraction (Leiboff 2020, 2). The figure of justice is often depicted as a rigid, statuesque, and blindfolded goddess, who is supposed to weigh the balance of justice according to an inner ‘eye.’ Theatrical and visual staging is regarded as circumstantial or even “ornamental” (Goodrich 2014, 16). Admittedly, theatricality may seem to contradict authenticity and logos. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word theatrical has a dominantly negative connotation that refers to an actor or a person who is “artificial, affected, assumed,” who has “the style of dramatic performance;

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extravagantly or irrelevantly histrionic; ‘stagy’; calculated for display, showy, spectacular.”2 The negative understanding of ‘theatricality’ may be traced back to Plato, who warned against the detrimental effects of art—more specifically, Greek theater (Eck and Bussels 2011, 12); (Leiboff 2020, 1–10). Theatricality was seen as the opposite of sincerity and authenticity (Pickett 2017, 5–6); (Weltman 2018, 913). In everyday speech, the word is often used with a derogatory meaning. But the law has always been directly dependent on many different forms of visualization, embodiment, and theatricalization. The written law was traditionally clothed in visual emblems; the court renders its verdict on the basis of material evidence; the practice of law is performed within a symbolic and hierarchical architecture, and the actors are dressed up for the occasion to play their roles in the legal drama of justice (Stone Peters 2022, 5–6). Focusing on the theatrical staging of law brings out the hierarchical structure of justice and its dependence on aesthetic framings. As Julie Stone Peters has argued, “law’s aesthetic power is essential to its force” (Stone Peters 2022, 5). In her recent, seminal book on theatrical jurisprudence, Marett Leiboff has argued that theater tests our “presumption and preconceptions where it matters in the most profound way, through our bodies, prior to the trigger of reason and rationality” (Leiboff 2020, 4). This does not mean that logos is not present; it just means that reason is rethought through the body. In the theater, the audience is captured by scenic and visual ‘wonders’ or by striking expositions of characters and situations. The theater engages the audience in an emotional and reflective experience that creates sympathy or antipathy, which demonstrates a problem in its multiple dimensions and, thus, makes it possible for the audience to rethink a matter in all its complexity and make a judgment. As argued by Read, its multisensorial form and its focus on conflictuality make theater adept at putting social and political problems on stage (Read 1995, 56). Or as formulated by Goran Petrovic-Lotina, “[t]heatricality is manifested through the tensions or drama that challenges sedimented spectatorial codes: the way spectators understand objects and forms of identity that are performed” (Petrović-Lotina 2019, 68). Taking his cue from Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Petrović-Lotina claims that every perceived 2  Oxford English Dictionary, 2022. https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/200230?redirect edFrom=theatrical#eid

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form is an expression of extra-linguistic social relations and hegemonic practices (Petrović-Lotina 2019, 68). Any change of the theatrical form is, therefore, also a change in the political sensible (Rancière 2004, 22). It changes or challenges our perception of social order, human relations, and hierarchies. Many of the texts studied in this book are theater plays. However, I do not investigate the history of actual performances. What I am interested in is the play as a rhetorical form and theatricality as a human rights rhetoric. Like Wendy S.  Hesford, I am interested in the spectacular rhetorics of human rights, but my examples are in all cases textual. Closing in on theatricality as a discursive strategy, I hope to analyze the activist and creative mode of discursive denunciation. Upendra Baxi has argued that every human rights claim has a basic performativity and is thus activistic: “Peoples in struggle and communities of resistance […] emerge as the makers of human rights norms and standards” (Baxi 2008, 208). And Jacques Ranciére has likewise argued that human rights are not rights until they are claimed by someone who activates them, thereby making equality visible (Ranciere 2004, 303). But what is theatricality as a written discourse? In recent decades, the concept of theatricality has been the focus of renewed scholarly attention. Two main tendencies stand out: one tradition associates theatricality with a heightened sense of drama, for instance in studies of melodrama (Peter Brooks, ix) or of Victorian novels, where theatricality has been located in passages that have the “quality of being exaggerated and excessively dramatic” (Weltman 2018, 913). In studies of Romantic dramas, it has been associated with “stylistic excess” and “a penchant for ornamentation” (Pascoe 1997, 3). In another more avantgardistic tradition, theatricality has been associated by Vsevolod Meyerhold and others with play, artifice, and estrangement techniques (ostranenie) (Jestrovic 2002, 42). Theatricality has been seen as a means of debunking mimetic, naturalist European theater (Fiebach 2002, 23), and it has been connected with the post-dramatic theater of Hans-Thies Lehmann to refer to everything in the theater that is not drama (the corporeal, the scenic, the musical, auditory and visual) (Leiboff 2020, 3). In this book, I am especially interested in the anti-dramatic meaning of the word theatrical. Though I analyze highly dramatic discourses that are often driven by plot, the forensic aim of the text is most often tied to a nonmimetic, anti-narrative, and multi-aesthetic expressive mode. I will argue that the anti-dramatic theatricality opens up dimensions of reality

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that are otherwise difficult to capture in rational, narrative language. As people who are familiar with the work of truth commissions or courts of transitional justice will know, not all truths about violence can be reported in a clear narration. Trauma and conflictuality may affect the style of discourse. Theatrical strategies can help to frame some of the conflictual content in a way that underlines the violence, the complexity of the experience, and multiple expressions of resistance and accusation. Though theatricality is sometimes seen as a radically open-ended demonstration of noncoded signs (Fischer-Lichte and Riley 1997, 72), the works that I study are all wedded to a cause and preoccupied with the illumination of some kind of wrongdoing. Their spectacle is composed to convince an audience of an injustice, a crime, a massacre, to awaken their moral reflection and ideally to turn them into moral actors and ‘judges’ themselves. Borrowing a concept from Augusto Boal, the audiences or readers are meant to become moral or political spect-actors (Boal 2006, 6). The question is, how do the theatrical texts do that? Many of the texts are written in hybrid genres and use multiple aesthetic strategies to make crimes of the past present within a contemporary aesthetic and political context, that is, within a contemporary forum. How do they make the bones speak? Which theatrical strategies create a convincing argument? How are visual, auditory, and corporeal strategies used to express and ‘clothe’ the logos in aesthetic framings that can convince different audiences? This is not just ‘telling the story’ about a crime as straightforwardly as possible. Forensic aesthetics involves a whole technology of the senses and, as I will argue, an attention to choices of genres, topoi, and style in relation to a calculated impact on a forum.

Literature and Human Rights In 2000, Costas Douzinas proclaimed the triumph of “a new ideal on the world stage: human rights.” He saw human rights as “the ideology after the end, the defeat of ideologies” (Douzinas 2000, 1–2). Human rights provided a general language, inside and outside of the courtroom, to talk about very different forms of abuses at all levels of society. Since then, human rights have only become more important, critical attention to their form and function has been the focus not only of lawyers, philosophers, and political scientists but also of anthropologists and cultural studies and literary scholars. During the last thirty years, the contribution of literary scholarship to the field has expanded rapidly especially since the

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publication of four seminal works in 2007: Lynn Hunt’s influential Inventing Human Rights: A History, James Dawes’ That the World May Know, Joseph Slaughter’s Human Rights, Inc., and Elizabeth Swanson Goldberg’s Beyond Terror: Gender, Narrative, Human Rights. Lynn Hunt argued that the epistolary, sentimentalist novel of the eighteenth century was essential for the development of modern human rights because it made it possible to enter the mind of a suffering stranger and “empathize across class, sex and national lines” (Hunt 2008, 38). James Dawes explored how to create convincing storytelling about catastrophic, violent events that “resist coherent representation” (Dawes 2007, 21). Joseph Slaughter studied the interdependence of human rights and the Bildungsroman: “the deep narrative grammar, and humanist social vision that human rights law shares with the Bildungsroman” (Slaughter 2007, 4)—particularly, regarding the development of “human personality,” a concept that is essential in later discussions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Slaughter 2007, 48). The hypothesis underlying this important work is that “[b]oth the Bildungsroman and human rights law recognize and construct the individual as a social creature and the process of individuation as an incorporative process of socialization” (Slaughter 2007, 19). Elizabeth Swanson Goldberg discusses problems of narrative realism in works on “terror” (Swanson Goldberg 2007, 12). All four works complicated the understanding of how to understand the rights-­ bearing subject, the humanism of human rights discourses, and the multiple functions of different forms of storytelling. The focus on narrative form within human rights and literature is evidently important. In the court and in literature, there is focus on the story of the victim, which is told, if possible, in a way that creates sympathy and engagement in the audience. In a recent book, James Dawes argues for the emergence in America of an independent narrative genre called the “novel of human rights” (Dawes 2018, 4). Already in 2007, quoting Susan Sontag, Elizabeth Swanson Goldberg argued that narrative, rather than just images of torture, is “the more potent vehicle for comprehension” since it makes it easier to feel empathy (Swanson Goldberg 2007, 12). In the last few decades, there has been a rise in published life narratives about violence, a tendency documented by Kay Schaffer and Sidonie Smith in their Human Rights and Narrated Lives (2004) (Schaffer and Smith 2006, 2). According to Schaffer and Smith, human rights stories are “strong, emotive stories often chronicling degradation, brutalization, exploitation, and physical violence” (Schaffer and Smith 2006, 4).

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In my book, I draw on all these previous studies. Narration is also part of the textual strategies chosen in the texts examined, but I wish to move the focus from narration to the less explored theatricality of the texts. The theatrical form is the dominant literary form in early modernity; but, as I wish to demonstrate, it is also influential in nineteenth-century discourses on slavery. The theater does not so much exhibit the interiority of the speaking I and his/her traumas. Rather, it unravels the social network around the I and the complex interdependence between different social agents. The theatrical form is adept at moving the focus from individual human rights to rights within a social sphere and to pay attention to the forum: the audiences who are meant to react in specific ways. By studying how this functions, I hope to contribute to the development of recent human rights thinking that seeks to move beyond a liberal human rights tradition and beyond mainstream representations of human rights. According to Crystal Parikh, mainstream representations of human rights are underwritten by “normative concepts of identity, autonomy, and agency” (Parikh 2019, 6). Though the pain and voice of individual victims are still essential, there is an effort to understand “subjectivities as relational and conditional, in turn making legible the causes of precarity and violence and conditions of belonging that compel the invocation of human rights in the first place” (Parikh 2019, 6). Susana Onega and Jean-­ Michel Ganteau have argued that a change has taken place in our understanding of victimhood. While we used to approach suffering as individual trauma, we now see suffering as “a violent expression of alterity” that “makes autonomy impossible” (Ganteau and Onega 2017, 3). Judith Butler’s concept of precariousness and vulnerability underlines that “each of us is constituted politically in part by virtue of the social vulnerability of our bodies […]” (Butler 2006, 20). Butler’s aim is to avoid privatization of grief and, instead, see vulnerability as something that constitutes us as human beings and as a community (Butler 2006, 22). The texts studied in this book discuss slavery, racism, and rights as socially and politically constituted. The ideas about the human rights of enslaved Native Americans and Africans did not grow out of an isolated philosophical theory but out of the experience of a violent encounter between real people in specific political circumstances. Depicting violence against other human beings in detail became an important way of denouncing the crime. But, from the very beginning the ethical problems of doing that were uncomfortably present: To what extent is it legitimate to depict torture, slavery, and death? How do you

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describe extreme violence without reducing the victims to an absolute state of helplessness, and the perpetrators to devilish incarnations of absolute evil? Which fora do the theatrical works address, and with what purposes? As James Dawes has pointed out, drawing on Freud and Adorno, the exposure of the victim’s pain may add insult to injury and may create an appeal not only to the moral indignation of the audience but also to their voyeuristic pleasure (Dawes 2007, 8–9). In her book The Ironic Spectator, Lili Chouliaraki argues that, today, discourses on human rights and humanitarianism “form part of a dispersed communicative structure of cosmopolitan ethics that mundanely acts as a moralizing force on Western public life […]” (Chouliaraki 2012, 3). She analyzes the self-­ interested engagement of Westerners in foreign suffering and points to the ethical problems and lack of real solidarity inherent in spectacular and emotionally engaged human rights discourses. Her analysis is based on contemporary developments, but it could be argued that, in early modernity, we saw the beginning of this ambiguous and asymmetrical ‘cosmopolitan’ structure of international empathy. Human rights discourses are not only oppositional to power. They also reproduce that power. As Wendy S. Hesford has argued: […] spectacular rhetoric activates certain cultural and national narratives and social and political relations, consolidates identities through the politics of recognition, and configures material relations of power and difference to produce and ultimately to govern human rights subjects. (Hesford 2011, 9)

In a recent book, Alexandra Schultheis Moore warns us against the fact that the “social imaginary of human rights often produces its most powerful effects through the manufacture and circulation of images and discourses of suffering that are grounded in ‘the logic of cultural recognition’—identity-based categories through which the liberal subject and its others are coded” (Schultheis Moore 2015, 7). This warning is even more important when we are dealing with human rights discourses in a slave society based on racial prejudice and produced within an empire. Norms of cultural recognition frame our encounter with the other; yet, our norms might also be challenged through that encounter. Logically, the acknowledgment of the rights of cultural others requires an expansion of “cultural recognition” or a move beyond “cultural recognition.” Many of the works studied in this book point to the gap between recognition of the other as a human being and recognition as a citizen. You must be

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considered human to have human rights, but this humanity is always limited and defined in relation to specific communities. The inclusion in the group of humanity is often an exclusive right only bestowed on some members of humanity. Often, distinctions within the human are made that exclude others. National and political borders reinforce exclusionary mechanisms. In the Spanish Empire, the debate was whether, despite their cultural and religious foreignness, Native Americans and Africans could be counted as human beings and, thus, possess human or natural rights. Were they created by God and equal to other human beings created by God? Were they free nomads and uncivilized barbarians, or did they belong to political communities? Were they, therefore, protected by international law? Or, if they belonged to the Spanish Empire, as it was proclaimed immediately after the conquest, were they, as subjects to the Spanish Crown, protected against human rights abuses? Did they have rights of man and/or rights of citizens?3

Structure of the Book In the book, I focus on five forms of theatricality: Allegorical, carnivalesque, tragicomic, melodramatic, and tragic. In the allegorical form, political conflicts are subsumed under a larger moral system; in the carnivalesque form, popular modes of collective protests are activated to reverse power structures; in the tragicomic mode, humor is used to debunk central imperial power; in the melodramatic mode, a sentimental bond is made between love and rights that function as a critique of social inequality; in the tragic mode, vulnerability to violence is demonstrated as connected with a sensibility that has a democratic potential. The book is divided into three parts. The first part (Chaps. 2 and 3) has an introductory character. In Chap. 2, I introduce the history of slavery and human rights within the Spanish Empire from 1492 to 1886 with an emphasis on the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries: two peak periods of slavery and human rights debates. I argue that the study of the Spanish 3  I use the word ‘man’ to designate the inherent universalism of human rights which grants rights to any subject, independently of gender, race, nationality, and so on. I use the word ‘citizen’ to refer to a subject within a limited political order. This political order may be defined as a city-state, like Athens; it can be a sovereign nation-state, like Spain and other European nations in early modernity; or it can be an indigenous community with a ruler, as was found in many and diverse forms in the New World.

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debates in the sixteenth century is important for reinterpreting modern human rights, and I argue for a link to abolitionism in Cuba in the nineteenth century. By studying the enslavement of Native Americans together with the enslavement of Africans, it becomes easier to see the contours of human rights that move beyond racial thinking. I do not pretend to give a full narrative of slavery and human rights from the sixteenth until the nineteenth century. The idea is to more modestly provide some basic historical context for the analysis of the literary texts from the two periods and to raise awareness of some surprising connections and some differences. In Chap. 3, I engage in a close reading of the allegorical theatricality in the Western world’s first atrocity story: Bartolomé de Las Casas’ Brevísima relación de la destruición de las Indias (A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies) from 1542 to 1552 with illustrations by Théodore de Bry (1598). This forensic text was hugely successful in reaching the ears of the king to whom it was addressed and in gaining a readership. It was translated more than forty times in the period and was read eagerly in the competing expansive empires of the Netherlands, Britain, and France. I compare Las Casas’ text with Théodore de Bry’s images and argue that Las Casas’ atrocity story, in contrast with de Bry’s images, has a political dimension. Las Casas argues not only for the Native Americans’ right not to be destroyed as human beings but also for their political rights as a ‘nation.’ In the text, Las Casas appears both as an eyewitness, a pathologist who ‘puts the bones on the table,’ and a lawyer who interprets the signs of violence and destruction for the audience, inserting them simultaneously into a religious allegory and the context of international law. I argue that the atrocity story has an activist agenda and uses allegory and theatrical effects to engage home audiences in a moral reflection. In Part II (Chaps. 4 and 5), I focus on comic or tragicomic texts. In Chap. 4, I focus on carnivalesque theatricality, which turns the political order upside down and uses ironic genre displacements. I analyze two texts that both see the conquest from the American side. I discuss a remarkable but almost unknown theatrical play written by Micael de Carvajal from approximately 1557. Micael de Carvajal’s play, Court of Death, is the first known Spanish play to deal with the conquest. In scene 19, we see Indians on stage who complain that they have been mistreated by the Spanish conquerors. The play draws on old traditions of the dance macabre, including this genre’s inherent carnivalesque traits and relation to the popular Corpus Christi festivals, but it is also inspired by Las Casas’

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modern political ideas. I argue that the function of the dance macabre is modernized to allow for a number of critical and ironic comments on politics and rights. In the play, the Native Americans turn an old European genre against their conquerors. Carvajal’s play will be compared with the anonymous American play Tragedia del fin de Atawallpa (The Tragedy of Atawallpa’s Death), which dramatizes the arrival of the Spaniards to the Inca Kingdom, the first meeting, and the captivation and execution of the Inca king, Atahualpa. The drama is one of a whole ‘series’ of plays about this event—plays that are still performed at popular festivals in Peru and Bolivia. The play draws on oral traditions and uses repetition and mirror effects to depict and expose social order and Spanish injustice. I’ll argue that the play is an ironic and hybrid revenge play, influenced by both indigenous and Spanish culture. In Chap. 5, I discuss tragicomic theatricality, which mixes tragedy and comedy to create critical reflection. The analytical focus is the play El nuevo mundo descubierto por Cristóbal Colón (The New World Discovered by Christopher Columbus) (1598–1603) by Lope de Vega. This important play by Lope de Vega was almost forgotten until the late twentieth century, when suddenly it became important for our understanding of the Spanish interpretation of the conquest. I’ll argue that the drama is an example of forensic presentism. It creates a dynamic reenactment of both the material and the ideological crimes committed during the conquest and the first period of colonization that allows the audience to witness the crimes as they are committed. One of the interesting things is that the reception has been divided between seeing the play either as a propaganda or as a subversive play. Lope de Vega uses humor both to expose the primitivism of the Indians and to deconstruct the ideological and religious sanction of the conquest by the Spaniards. I’ll argue that the contradictory interpretations are a consequence of the drama’s tragicomic form. Through this form, the play creates a dual vision that allows us to see the conquest from both the Spanish and the American side, almost as in a violent tennis game, thus creating an intercultural and politically charged setting for the discussion of rights. In the third and last part (Chaps. 6 and 7), I focus on tragic texts. In Chap. 6, I focus on melodramatic theatricality, stylistically based on tableaux vivants that create egalitarian, affective absorption. I analyze the novel Sab (1841) by the Cuban-Spanish writer Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda. Reception also of this novel varies. Some see the novel as

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abolitionist; others claim that it only pays lip service to the anti-slavery cause. In my reading, I shift attention away from the explicit story to the aesthetics of the novel. I argue that the novel is a melodramatic tragedy. Blood runs constantly through the landscape, testifying to the crimes against indigenous and black people. Through its numerous theatrical tableaux vivants, the book creates a strong connection between religious sentiment, love, and natural rights, and it visualizes scenes of interracial solidarity. Finally, in Chap. 7, I focus on tragic theatricality. I analyze the only autobiography in Spanish written by a slave, namely Juan Francisco Manzano’s Autobiografía de un esclavo (Autobiography of a Slave) (written 1835) and his tragic drama Zafira (1842). I discuss the alleged ‘weakness’ of the writer and the potential civilizing force of vulnerability and sensibility. I argue that the autobiography has a tragic forensic structure and that it is possible to shed new light on the autobiography by reading it through the tragedy of Zafira. In both works, Manzano connects vulnerability with poetic and democratic sentiment. In the epilogue, I discuss the function of forensic theatricality: How can different forms of forensic theatricality frame our understanding of human rights and claims for justice? I argue that the Spanish human rights are interesting because of their foundation in a natural rights tradition, their complex relation to politics and globalization, and the focus on both individual and collective rights of freedom.

References Adorno, Rolena. 2007. The polemics of possession in Spanish American narrative. New Haven: Yale University Press. Baxi, Upendra. 2008. The future of human rights. 3rd ed, Oxford India paperbacks. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Boal, Augusto. 2006. The aesthetics of the oppressed. London: Routledge. Butler, Judith. 2006. Precarious life: The powers of mourning and violence. London: Verso. Chouliaraki, Lilie. 2012. The ironic spectator: Solidarity in the age of post-­ humanitarianism. Cambridge: Polity. Dawes, James. 2007. That the world may know: Bearing witness to atrocity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 2018. The novel of human rights. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Douzinas, Costas. 2000. The end of human rights: Critical legal thought at the turn of the century. Oxford: Hart.

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Eck, Caroline van, and Stijn Bussels. 2011. Theatricality in early modern art and architecture, Art history book series. Vol. 7. Malden, Mass: Wiley-Blackwell. Fiebach, Joachim. 2002. Theatricality: From oral traditions to televised “realities”. SubStance 31 (2/3): 17–41. https://doi.org/10.2307/3685476. Fischer-Lichte, Erika, and Jo Riley. 1997. The show and the gaze of theatre: A European perspective, studies in theatre history and culture. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. Fischer-Lichte, Erika, Minou Arjomand, and Ramona Thomasius. 2014. The Routledge introduction to theatre and performance studies. London: Routledge. Frieze, James. 2019. Theatrical performance and the forensic turn, Routledge advances in theatre and performance studies. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Galván Rodríguez, Eduardo. 2014. La abolición de la esclavitud en España. Debates parlamentarios, 1810–1886. Madrid: Dykinson. Ganteau, Jean-Michel, and Susana Onega. 2017. Victimhood and vulnerability in 21st century fiction, Routledge interdisciplinary perspectives on literature. Vol. 74. New York: Routledge. Goodrich, Peter. 2014. Legal emblems and the art of law: Obiter depicta as the vision of governance, legal emblems & the art of law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hermoso, Borja. 2018. Operación: lavar la imagen de España. El País, January 29, 2018, Cultura. https://elpais.com/cultura/2018/01/26/actualidad/1516972125_735578.html. Hesford, Wendy. 2011. Spectacular Rhetorics: Human rights visions, recognitions, feminisms, next wave. Durham: Duke University Press. Hunt, Lynn Avery. 2008. Inventing human rights: A history. Paperback ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. Jestrovic, Silvija. 2002. Theatricality as estrangement of art and life in the Russian Avant-Garde. SubStance 31 (2/3): 42–56. https://doi.org/10.2307/3685477. Keenan, Thomas, and Eyal Weizman. 2012. Mengele's skull: The advent of a forensic aesthetics. Berlin: Sternberg Press. Leiboff, Marett. 2020. Towards a theatrical jurisprudence, space, materiality and the normative. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Luis, William. 2007. Introducción a Juan Francisco Manzano: Autobiografía del esclavo poeta y otras escritos. In Juan Francisco Manzano: Autobiografía del esclavo poeta y otras escritos, ed. William Luis, 13–73. Vervuert: Iberoamericana. Parikh, Crystal. 2019. The Cambridge companion to human rights and literature, Cambridge companions to topics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pascoe, Judith. 1997. Romantic theatricality: Gender, poetry and spectatorship. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Patterson, Orlando. 2018. Slavery and social death: A comparative study: With a new preface. First Harvard University Press paperback edition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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Petrović-Lotina, Goran. 2019. Theatricality: A dramatic form of contesting spectatorial codes. Performance Research 24 (4): 68–75. https://doi.org/10.108 0/13528165.2019.1641326. Philip, Marlene Nourbese. 2008. Zong!, Wesleyan poetry series. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Pickett, Howard. 2017. Rethinking sincerity and authenticity the ethics of theatricality in Kant, Kierkegaard, and Levinas. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. Ranciere, Jacques. 2004. Who is the subject of the rights of man? The South Atlantic quarterly 103 (2–3): 297–310. https://doi. org/10.1215/00382876-­103-­2-­3-­297. Rancière, Jacques. 2004. The politics of aesthetics: The distribution of the sensible. London: Continuum. Read, Alan. 1995. Theatre and everyday life: An ethics of performance. London: Routledge. Schaffer, Kay, and Sidonie Smith. 2006. Human rights and narrated lives: The ethics of recognition. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Schultheis Moore, Alexandra. 2015. Vulnerability and security in human rights literature and visual culture, Routledge interdisciplinary perspectives on literature. Vol. 56. London: Routledge. Slaughter, Joseph R. 2007. Human rights, Inc.: The world novel, narrative form, and international law. 1st ed. New York: Fordham University Press. Stone Peters, Julie. 2022. Law as performance: Theatricality, spectatorship, and the making of law in ancient, medieval, and early modern Europe, law and literature ser. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Swanson Goldberg, Elizabeth. 2007. Beyond terror: Gender, narrative, human rights. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Weizman, Eyal. 2010. Forensic architecture: Only the criminal can solve the crime. Radical Philosophy 164: 9–24. Weltman, Sharon Aronofsky. 2018. Theatricality. Victorian Literature and Culture 46 (3–4): 913–917. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1060150318001171.

PART I

Slavery, Theatricality and Human Rights in the Spanish Empire

CHAPTER 2

Slavery and Human Rights in the Spanish Empire

The arguments, presented by [Las Casas], for the Americans’ right to individual freedom are applicable to other, different political situations that are analogous to the conditions in which those Indians found themselves. —Juan Antonio Llorente (1822) (“Las razones que daba [Las Casas] en favor del derecho de libertad individual a los Americanos son aplicables á otras varias situaciones políticas que tengan analogía con las circunstancias en que se vieron aquellos Indios” (Llorente 1822, iii; my translation)

Slavery was an inherent part of the Spanish Empire from ‘the beginning’ (just after the encounter with the ‘New World’) until 1886. That is almost 400 years, almost the entire colonial period. As soon as Columbus set foot on land in the ‘New World’ (12 October 1492) on an island in the Bahamas, which he chose to name San Salvador (called by the indigenous natives Guanahaní), he contemplated the possible enslavement of the indigenous people.1 In his second letter home, dated 15 February 1493, he narrates how he has taken natives with him by force (“por fuerza”) (Columbus 2010, 1), and he promises that he will bring home not only 1  All his life, Columbus thought and insisted that “what he had discovered was not a new world but a new route to the old, familiar world of Asia” (Pagden 1993, 86).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 K.-M. Simonsen, Slavery and the Forensic Theatricality of Human Rights in the Spanish Empire, Palgrave Studies in Literature, Culture and Human Rights, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31531-2_2

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gold, spices, cotton, and mastic but also “slaves, as many of these idolators as their Highnesses shall command to be shipped” (Columbus 2010, 15).2 Today, the extent to which and how early there was an innate sense of ownership of the new land by the Spanish ‘explorers’ might be surprising. Columbus acted, of course, on behalf of the Catholic Monarchs and in accordance with medieval Castilian law, which bestowed a right of possession to those who discovered new land (Orique 2021, 41). However, America was not terra nullius; it was inhabited. Did these inhabitants not have a right to their own land and a right not to be enslaved? In the letter quoted above, Columbus mentions that, although the island “was thickly populated” (“con gente syn numero”) (Columbus 2010, 1), he “took possession [of it] without resistance for their Highnesses by proclamation made and with the royal standard unfurled.”3 After having seized more islands—among them, Hispaniola (today’s Haiti and the Dominican Republic), which he calls “a wonder” (“marauilla”) (Columbus 2010, 5), Columbus adds, “[…] I hold them all for their Highnesses, so that they can dispose of them quite as absolutely as they can of the kingdoms of Castile, […].”4 Columbus assumed that people in the new land would immediately become subjects to the Spanish Crown like the Spanish people in the peninsula. However, as it quickly turned out, the political status of the Native Americans was not the same as all other Spanish subjects. The people of the new world were clearly in a more vulnerable political position than “all other Spanish subjects” since, according to Columbus’ assumptions, they could easily be made into slaves. In the centuries to come, there would be millions of enslaved people in America, both Native Americans and Africans. Spain was not alone in the business of slavery. However, according to José Antonio Piqueras, Spain was the European nation that engaged in slavery in the most extensive and 2  “esclavos quanto mandaran cargar et seran delos ydolatres” (Columbus 2010, 15). Letter to Luis Santangel, 15 February 1493 (Columbus 2010, 1). Luis Santangel was an official of the Crown of Aragón, who had helped Columbus in the enterprise of the discovery. According to Margarita Zambora, this letter and another almost identical letter to Rafael Sánchez (another official of the Crown of Aragón) were “so vigorously and widely circulated that it is not difficult to see in their promotion a concerted propaganda campaign” (Zamora 1993, 11). 3  “[…] yo fallé muy muchas Islas pobladas con gente syn numero. Y dellas todas he tomado possession por sus altezas con pregon y vandera real estendida y non me fue contradicho” (Columbus 2010, 1–2). 4  “y todas las tengo por de sus altezas qual dellas pueden disponer commo y tan complidamente commo delos Reynos de castilla” (Columbus 2010, 11).

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continuous way (Piqueras 2011, 27). Without slavery and other forms of forced labor, the empire would not have had the dominating position it had—especially, in early modernity (Piqueras 2011, 59).5 Slavery existed in peninsular Spain before the conquest, but these slaves were mostly war captives from the northern part of Africa or elsewhere in the Mediterranean. In some cities—for instance, the important city of Seville (“Reino de Sevilla”)—the enslaved people (Turks, white north Africans, and black sub-Saharan Africans, both Muslims and Christians) numbered up to 10 percent of the population (Clayton 2009, 1527); (Chavez et  al. 2009, 601). Slavery related to ‘just war’ was considered legal or even merciful since it was believed to be a substitution for death (Patterson 2018, 5). As Rolena Adorno notes, “hardly any sixteenth-­ century European thinker opposed civil slavery” and the taking of slaves in a just war (Adorno 2007, 65–66). To quote Brian Tierney, this form of slavery was legitimate and “recognized in Roman and Jewish Law” (Tierney 1997, 254). However, in 1444, Portugal started a regular slave trade from the coasts of Guinea in Africa that was not related to war but to the development of commerce and modern industry. These slaves were first put to work in Portugal and Portugal’s Atlantic islands—later, also in mines and agriculture in the new colonies in America (Blackburn 2011, 102). Soon, other empires followed the Portuguese example. During the sixteenth century, prominent theologians and lawyers questioned the legitimacy of the enslavement of innocent people who had not engaged in any form of warfare. However, the appropriation of foreign land and enslavement even of its peaceful inhabitants was supported by the highest religious authority. The Spanish-born pope, Alexander VI, issued two papal bulls on the issue already in the spring of 1493. In the bull dated 4 May 1493, Inter caetera, the Pope solemnly and by “the authority of Almighty God” gives or grants the territory “found and to be found” west of the Azores and Cape Verde to the “Kings of Castile and León.” He encourages or even demands the overthrow of the “barbarous nations,” which need to be “brought to faith itself” unless any of the local princes

5  “Sin esclavitud y otras modalidades de trabajo sometido a coacción, el imperio español de América hubiera debido conformarse con una extension y una rentabilidad limitadas” (Piqueras 2011, 59).

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may be said to be Christian.6 In the following years, the Spanish conquerors and colonialists would refer to this papal bull for legitimacy. For instance, the apostolic legitimization of Spanish rule in America is quoted as late as 1680 in the introduction to the compilation of Laws of the Indies.7 Political and economic strategies of colonization and exploitation were accompanied by the motivation and legitimization of a holy mission and the salvation of souls. Slowly, Spanish colonies were established and grew all over America. One hundred years after the conquest, “Spanish America was the largest and most populated European domain in the new world” (Borucki et  al. 2015, 433). Spain had conquered not only areas with peaceful inhabitants in the Caribbean but also the territory of the powerful Aztec Empire (defeated in 1521), the Inca Empire (defeated in 1533),8 and the Mayan Empire (defeated in 1524–1546).9 Though the Spanish met resistance in several places, the Spanish Empire in America eventually stretched from California to Buenos Aires.10 In this huge territory, what 6  “[…] we, of our own accord, not at your instance nor the request of anyone else in your regard, but of our own sole largess and certain knowledge and out of the fullness of our apostolic power, by the authority of Almighty God conferred upon us in blessed Peter and of the vicarship of Jesus Christ, which we hold on earth, do by tenor of these presents, should any of said islands have been found by your envoys and captains, give, grant, and assign to you and your heirs and successors, kings of Castile and Leon, forever, together with all their dominions, cities, camps, places, and villages, and all rights, jurisdictions, and appurtenances, all islands and mainlands found and to be found, discovered and to be discovered towards the west and south, by drawing and establishing a line from the Arctic pole, namely the north, to the Antarctic pole, namely the south, no matter whether the said mainlands and islands are found and to be found in the direction of India or towards any other quarter, the said line to be distant one hundred leagues towards the west and south from any of the islands commonly known as the Azores and Cape Verde” (my emphasis) (Alexander VI 1493, 2–3). 7  The first sentence in vol. 3 of Laws of the Indies, dedicated to the dominium and royal jurisdiction in the Indian territory, includes a direct quotation of the papal bull of 1493: “Por Donacion de la Santa Sede Apostolica, y otros justos y legitimos títulos, somos Señor de las Indias Occidentales, Islas y Tierra firme del mar Occeano, descubiertas y por deschubrir, y están incorporadas en nuestra Real Corona de Castilla” (my emphasis). The laws were compiled by Antonio de León and Juan de Solórzano Pereira and approved by Charles II of Spain, https://www.leyes.congreso.gob.pe/Documentos/LeyIndia/0203001.pdf 8  The Incan people retained a stronghold in Vilcabamba. In 1572, the last Inca ruler, Túpac Amaru, was executed. 9  The Mayans retained a stronghold in Petén Basin. They were finally defeated in 1697 by Martín de Usua. 10  According to René Jara and Nicholas Spadaccini, “[t]he overthrow of the indigenous empires of Mesoamerica and the Andes was achieved by a handful of men—less than a thousand in all” (Jara and Spadaccini 1992, 6). During the Habsburg regime, Spain also possessed large areas of Europe, including the Netherlands, Portugal, parts of Italy, and some areas of the Philippines and northern Africa.

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was mostly needed to make the colonies function was political order and a huge workforce. In the beginning, the Spanish enslaved the indigenous people. But, already in 1501, the first Africans were sent as slaves into the new territory (Saco 2009, 254; Adorno 2007, 64–65). The history of Spanish slavery is remarkable when compared with the history of slavery in competing empires such as the British, the French, and the Dutch. It is atypical in its length and asynchronicity, its early start, its late abolition, its non-involvement in the slave trade until relatively late, and its centralistic and legalistic approach to slavery and abolition. As mentioned above, Spanish slavery lasts almost 400 years (1501–1886). An overview of this period provides a good impression of the varieties and changing functions of the institution of slavery. Enslavement of both Native Americans and Africans took place throughout the entire period but in different forms. The enslavement of Native Americans was especially prolific in the first period of the empire but continued in some form in the centuries to come. The enslavement of Africans peaked especially in two periods, according to Borucki, Eltis, and Wheat, which do not coincide with the peak periods of the British, Dutch, and French: around 1620 and again in the nineteenth century (Borucki et al. 2015, 436–437). The first period of enslavement happened in an ‘empire of conquest,’ which focused on the expansion of empire. The later enslavement happened in an ‘empire of commerce’ in competition with other colonial empires. In the early seventeenth century, the Spanish Empire was still at its height, but a sense of crisis was emerging. The loss of the Armada in 1588, the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War in 1618, and a growing economic decline made income from the colonies extremely welcome. In this early period, when slavery was not yet institutionalized in other empires, it grew in all the Spanish colonies. In the beginning, it was not modern slavery. As Robin Blackburn has argued, early slavery in Spanish and Portuguese colonies was heavily “influenced by medieval, Mediterranean and Roman legacies” (Blackburn 2011, 21). Spanish slavery in the Baroque period (sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) was characterized by flexibility and a relatively large number of free people of color (Blackburn 2011, 47). When the industrialization of slavery took off in French and especially in British colonies in the eighteenth century, Spain struggled to keep up, but in contrast with Britain, who left many issues up to the planters themselves or private initiative, there was a centralistic strategy in the Spanish Empire. The state and the church within the Spanish Empire continued to reserve the right to determine the status of the enslaved people (Blackburn

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2011, 100) and to keep centralized control over the vast new land. According to Ewout Frankema, the radical inequality in access to land in Latin America has its roots in the Spanish “corporatist structure … in which the supreme authority of the Spanish Crown was based on a complex exchange of privileges in turn for services in support of the Church, the army and the landowning elites” (Frankema 2010, 421). Despite certain attempts at modernization and liberalization of the trade in the eighteenth century, the modernization of the sugar industry only happened in Cuba in the nineteenth century. Paradoxically, the last peak slavery period in the Spanish Empire coincides with the period of international abolitionism (Fradera and Schmidt-Nowara 2013, 7). In the nineteenth century, the increase of African slavery in Spanish territory is mainly connected with the sugar industry in Cuba. After the revolution in Haiti, sugar production in the French colony had decreased significantly, which provided Cuba and Spain with an historic chance to develop the sugar industry and expand its export to international markets (Bergad 2007, 17). To take advantage of this opportunity, Spain ‘had to’ import more slaves. According to Borucki, Eltis, and Wheat, “Spanish transatlantic slavers disembarked over one million captives in the Americas. Two-thirds of those captives embarked in the nineteenth century, more than half of them after 1820 […]” (Borucki et al. 2015, 454). Atypically, Spain did not participate actively in slave transports from Africa until the late eighteenth century. It acquired slaves through the asiento system, which consisted of contracts between the Spanish Crown and foreign companies (Fradera and Schmidt-Nowara 2013, 3). This system allowed Spain to remain free of any direct responsibility for the problematic slave trade until 1789 when the Spanish Crown permitted Spanish ships to engage in the practice on the coast of Africa (Piqueras 2011, 15). The Spanish involvement in the slave trade grew in the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the British and French abolished it respectively in 1807 and 1815. Another atypical trait is that the Spanish history of slavery is a highly legalistic history, regulated by numerous decrees and laws and accompanied by a simultaneous, legalistic critique of slavery. Criticism was voiced from the very beginning and at the very heart of the empire, even by the Spanish Crown itself. In the words of Lewis Hanke, there was a veritable “struggle for justice” (Hanke 2002). But the position of the Spanish rulers was deeply ambiguous: on the one hand, they wanted to protect the rights of the Native Americans and Africans within the empire and to make

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sure that the Spanish conquerors, colonists, and creoles treated them well. On the other hand, they made rules and laws that legitimized the system of slavery and permitted the enormous profits made by forced labor. This kind of ambiguity may foster a certain skepticism regarding the position of the Spanish Crown and any intellectuals associated with the Crown. However, it is also true that the Spaniards managed to inaugurate a strong tradition of rights thinking that, for a long time, was unparalleled in other empires. Some would see the early defense of the rights of the Native Americans as dissociated from the later abolition of the enslavement of Africans. However, in the following I argue that there are both indirect and direct ties, and the longue durée of slavery, the particular forms of racism, and the fight for color-blind rights within an increasingly hybrid society are better understood if the two struggles are seen as related. In the rest of this chapter, I shall provide more context for the history of the two forms of slavery and the human rights thinking in the two periods.

Indigenous and African Slavery: The Idea of Natural Slaves and the Constitutive Elements of Slavery In the first period of colonization, the number of indigenous slaves increased every year: first, due to the system of repartimiento that distributed Native Americans among conquerors; after that, in accordance with the encomienda system, which was institutionalized between 1502 and 1509 (Batchelder and Sanchez 2013, 46). Pursuant to the encomienda system, American natives were regarded as vassals who owed goods and services to the Crown. Conquerors and colonists who had invested time and money in the colonial enterprise and risked their lives were given temporary grants to be encomenderos, which meant that they were given a certain number of indigenous people as servants or slaves (Batchelder and Sanchez 2013, 46). There was no right to land involved (Zavala 2016, 80–82). However, as it is well known, massive swaths of land were seized on the argument that Indians were nomads and not really in possession of their land (Schmitt 2006, 87). Due to the hardships of work in the mines and on land and due to illnesses imported by the Europeans (Elliott 2002b, 148), as well as famine and warfare, many slaves died, and entire indigenous communities perished or survived only in decimated numbers—in some places, by

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“seventy, eighty or even ninety percent” (Reséndez 2016, 6). This made the need for other slaves more and more obvious, and the import of slaves from the coast of Guinea developed as a parallel economy. However, contrary to what is often believed, indigenous slavery did not stop but “coexisted with African slavery from the sixteenth all the way through the late nineteenth century” (Reséndez 2016, 4).11 It is relatively hard to determine the exact number of indigenous slaves—not least, because it was illegal already from 1542 when the New Laws (Nuevas leyes) abolished Indian slavery and the so-called encomienda system. This means that there are no official records documenting it; and, ironically, since such slavery was illegal, there was no ‘abolition’ movement on their behalf.12 Reséndez estimates that the number of Native American slaves in both of the Americas is between 2,500,000 and 5,000,000 (Reséndez 2016, 5). The exact number is not for this book to debate. However, it is certain, as Silvio Zavala has argued, that forced labor continued after the abolition of the encomienda system. Coercion was applied, for instance, via the so-called cuatequil system (or mita), which forced Native Americans to work for a very small salary (Zavala 2016, 95). Though, strictly speaking, it is not slavery, it is forced labor. Force was legitimized by the jurists in order to provide labor in the “public interest” of maintaining a colony (Zavala 2016, 95). Later, indigenous people were forced to stay on plantations and work off debts. The system of peonage has its roots in this early colonial period (Zavala 2016, 100).13 Regarding black slavery, estimates made by the historians Borucki, Eltis, and Wheat in 2015 on the basis of the Transatlantic Slave-Trade Database and other archival sources tell us that approximately 1,506,000 11  According to Andrés Reséndez, it was primarily women and children who were enslaved in the later period, and this eventually made indigenous slavery into a reverse mirror image of black slavery (Reséndez 2016, 4). The enslavement of women and children was often disguised linguistically as “involuntary servitude” or “debt peonage” (Reséndez 2016, 8). 12  A clear sign that indigenous slavery did not end with the New Laws in 1542 is that new laws and decrees were issued against the enslavement of the Indians in the following years: in 1588, 1609, 1618, 1631, and 1662, and again in 1679 (Saco 2009, 437–443). 13  In the late sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth century, Indians’ wages went up. However, these wages were mainly paid to skilled male labor (Zavala 2016, 97). In 1601 and 1609, new decrees established that work had to be voluntary; but, despite this, compulsory work continued. In 1632, a new prohibition against forced labor was issued by the Spanish Crown; but, even after this law, landowners did everything they could to keep Indian workers on their farms “by depriving them of freedom to leave the farm at will” and by keeping them in debt (Zavala 2016, 99).

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enslaved Africans arrived in Spanish America “directly from Africa” and an additional 566,000 arrived from other European colonies in America (Borucki et al. 2015, 434). Borucki, Eltis, and Wheat argue that Spain was more involved in the trade than is often acknowledged particularly because of Spain’s involvement in the intra-American trade. They calculate that Spain was the fourth-largest slave trader but close to being the third largest (Borucki et al. 2015, 454). As mentioned above, enslavement of Native Americans and Africans is often seen as two different phenomena. The first is associated with the brutal conquest and early colonial period; the second is associated with industrialization and modern capitalism. The first one is an ‘internal’ affair in the Americas; the second one is associated with international trade and politics. The first form of slavery is often spoken about as ‘forced labor’ rather than slavery; the second has become the archetypical image of slavery: the forced migration of Africans as chattel, the horrendous ‘middle passage,’ the arrival of Africans at inhuman slave markets, the branding of human beings as goods, the harsh work especially in the sugar plantations, and the stigmatizing racism that is often seen as a product of black slavery. However, as mentioned above, in the Spanish and Portuguese areas of America, the enslavement of Africans started very early, already in 1501 (Saco 2009, 254), and ended very late (in 1886 in Cuba and in 1888 in Brazil). Enslavement of Native Americans did not end after the first century of conquest. It just took other forms. The forced labor continued well into the twentieth century. Instead of seeing so-called red and black slavery as radically different and chronologically successive, one may see them as connected, simultaneous, and parallel phenomena. The two forms of slavery have a number of similarities. Though the enslavement of American natives normally happened in the American continent, it started with a ‘middle passage.’ In 1495, Columbus loaded 550 Native Americans on caravels to be transported to and sold in Spain as slaves. Approximately 200 perished on sea due to illness and cold weather, and their bodies were thrown into the sea. According to Andrés Reséndez, “[w]ith this voyage, Columbus inaugurated the Middle Passage, complete with overcrowding and high mortality rates commonly associated with African slavery” (Reséndez 2016, 25). It was a middle passage in the ‘wrong’ direction and not very successful. Columbus’ project of selling the Native Americans in Spain and of sending 4000 Native Americans more was stopped by the Catholic Monarchs. But the story documents the

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harsh treatment of Native Americans. They were treated as nothing more than chattel (Adorno 2007, 265). Both forms of slavery were supported by racism, which ironically is a modern feature (Hall 2017, 53). In differentiation from ancient forms of slavery in Greece and Rome, which were not based on distinctions of biology, race, or skin color (Wilson 1996, 2–3), modern forms of slavery made such distinctions at an early stage. Though racial prejudice sometimes differed, both Native Americans and Africans were regarded as barbarians who belonged to another generic category than white Europeans: “the worst, defective members of their own species” (Pagden 1982, 17). In the mid-sixteenth century, the royal historian and Aristotelean Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda argued that Native Americans were not rational creatures but barbaric beings and that they were born to be natural slaves (Vega 1992, 15). In the same period, a proto-racism developed against black slaves inside of Spain (Hornback 2018, 1–5). Though there were at the time both white and black slaves in the peninsula,14 black slaves constituted the majority15—to the point that the Spanish word negro came to be associated with slavery (García Barranco 2010, 154) and with low, marginalized social status (Méndez Rodríguez 2010, 110).16 Whereas (white) Muslims were considered dangerous and often demonized in literature, black Africans were considered morally and intellectually inferior by nature and, therefore, especially suitable to be slaves (García Barranco 2010, 171). Aristotle’s book on Politics, in which the idea of natural slavery figures, appeared in a Spanish translation by Ginés de Sepulveda in 1548 and was widely quoted to legitimize the enslavement of both Native Americans and black Africans. In Aristotle, the idea of natural slavery was not connected to the idea of race or ethnicity. In Book I of the Politics, Aristotle says more generally:

14  Some were Christians; some were Muslims; others belonged to very different African cultures and religions from a huge sub-Saharan region stretching from Guinea to Ethiopia. Seville and other Andalucian cities were a veritable multicultural “chess board” or “deck of cards” as Cervantes called it (Méndez Rodríguez 2010, 98). 15  Clayton writes: “Notarial records from 1501 to 1525 indicate 5271 slaves in Seville, and of these almost 4000 were listed as blacks or mulattoes” (Clayton 2009, 1527). 16  There were many stereotypical images of blacks, some of which drew on St. Augustine, who wrote that the ancestor of the blacks, Ham, had made fun of his father Noah and was considered to be “morally dirty” and impure. Blacks were associated with unusual sexual appetites and with a strong song and dance culture (García Barranco 2010, 155).

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Those men therefore who are as much inferior to others as the body is to the soul, are to be thus disposed of, as the proper use of them is their bodies, in which their excellence consists; and if what I have said be true, they are slaves by nature, and it is advantageous to them to be always under government. He then is by nature formed a slave who is qualified to become the chattel of another person, and on that account is so, and who has just reason enough to know that there is such a faculty, without being indued with the use of it. (Aristotle 1912, 31–32)

Though, for Aristotle, natural slaves were any men who did not possess reason, his ideas were adapted to the American context by Ginés de Sepúlveda and others, who used it indiscriminately to describe all Americans. Later, the idea was expanded to cover Africans. The connection between the idea of natural slavery and racism was, thus, strengthened. Racism was, perhaps, not the cause of slavery, but it certainly served to support its continuation. From the sixteenth century until today, racist terminology permeates all discourses on slavery and creates what Frantz Fanon called “a Manichaean World” (Fanon 2004, 6–7), that is, a binary opposition between “white” and “black”/“red,” between the civilized and the barbarian. The most important similarity between the two forms of slavery is that they were both a highly systematized form of violence, regulated by laws, decrees, and norms by the centralized power of Spain. According to Manuel Lucena Salmoral, the laws and norms regulating the treatment of indigenous and black workforce were the same from the sixteenth century until seventeenth century and included regulation of food, rules for punishment, and bodily branding (Lucena Salmoral 2000, 121–122). And the fight against slavery in both cases took a markedly legalistic form. Abolitionism in the nineteenth century was inspired by abolitionism in the sixteenth century. Thus, there is an intellectual common thread between the two periods. In both periods, human rights are discussed in the tension between religion and politics, between national and international concerns, between centralistic, ideological, and economic ambitions in the peninsula versus the pragmatic and neo-national, independent interests of the colonists and creoles in the new America. In the sixteenth century, the encounter with the New World challenged the laws and norms of the Old World and created an intellectual opportunity for rethinking the very basis of human rights. This was mainly done by theologians. In the nineteenth century in

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Cuba, inspiration from the sixteenth century’s human rights debates is adapted in complex ways within a highly syncretistic, secular, and politically tense colonial context. In order to clarify the specificities of the rights thinking, let us have a brief look at the two periods in question.

Human Rights and Laws of the Indies in Spain in the Mid-Sixteenth Century Sixteenth-century Spain was dominated by a legalistic culture. Following the conquest, a huge debate among theologians and jurists broke out regarding the legal and ethical foundation of the militant Spanish strategies and violent behavior in America. Did the Spanish have the right to take the land in America and enslave the indigenous people? Were the Native Americans human beings; and, if so, were they not creatures of God who should be protected, if not respected? Did the American communities own their land; did they have a political structure? If so, were they not comparable to sovereign states on which you could not wage unjust war? These questions were at the heart of the many debates—not least, among theologians and jurists from the Salamanca School, including Domingo de Soto (1494–1560), Francisco de Vitoria (1483–1546), and Bartolomé de Las Casas (1484–1566). Perhaps, these debates did not actually alleviate the situation of the colonized and enslaved natives in America; but, as Brian Tierney has argued, the debates did develop the idea of natural rights enormously.17 As demonstrated by James Brown Scott and others, they helped develop the first modern ideas about international law, based not only on ius gentium, a law of nations derived from natural law that assumes a moral foundation common to all peoples, but also on ius inter gentes, a law between different nations or peoples (Scott 2000, 4). Colonialism was a challenge to the received ethical and legal norms. These norms had to be rethought in the context of the New World, but the theologians and jurists naturally drew on already-developed legal systems such as canon law, just war theory, and concepts of law developed by influential Christian philosophers such as 17  “[…] if the Spanish debates did nothing for the hapless Indians, they did significantly affect the development of Western political theory, and this is especially true when we consider the theme of natural rights” (Tierney 1997, 225). For a substantial discussion of the philosophical development of natural rights in the sixteenth century, see Brian Tierney’s book, especially chapter XI, “Aristotle and the American Indians.”

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Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. Greek philosophy was also a recurring influence—especially, Aristotle (“the Philosopher”). Queen Isabella I is sometimes mentioned as the first political defender of the human rights of the Native Americans. When faced with the fact that Columbus had enslaved native Americans, she reportedly asked in almost legalistic terms: “By what authority does the Admiral give my vassals away?” (Hanke 2002, 20) (Martínez de Salinas Alonso 2019, 23).18 The Catholic Monarchs were in doubt about whether the Spanish ‘war’ in America met the requirements of a ‘just war.’ If not, according to the moral compass of the day, it would not be possible to enslave the Indians. Their reaction to this doubt was symptomatic of Spanish policy: they appointed a committee of intellectuals and theologians to decide “whether the Natives of the New World met [the] legal standard of ‘enemy’ and thus constituted an enslaveable people” (Reséndez 2016, 26). The committee worked for five years(!). Unfortunately, the documents it produced are lost; but, on 20 June 1500, the Catholic Monarchs sent out a decree (cédula) that ordered the restoration of freedom to the Indians who had been sold in the south of Spain (Martínez de Salinas Alonso 2019, 24). Queen Isabella I was certainly concerned about the justice of slavery and has been called “an early champion of Indian rights” (Reséndez 2016, 26); but, on 20 December 1503, before her death, a royal order was issued that legitimized the use of forced labor through the system of repartimiento (partition of the Indians among the conquerors) and encomienda (a system that allowed the conquerors the use Indians for forced labor (Martínez de Salinas Alonso 2019, 30).19 The Cédula permitted the first governor of Hispaniola, Nicolás de Ovando, to grant Indians to Spanish encomenderos. Thus, a system of enslavement of Native Americans was sanctioned by the Catholic Monarchs at a relatively early date. This moral Janus face of the Spanish Empire developed in many dramatic and contradictory ways as the years went by. The number of enslaved Indians and encomenderos grew, and so did the number of defenders of Indian rights. On the one hand, the Crown wanted to control the Spanish colonists, protect its new Indian subjects from the maltreatment by the colonists, and secure their peaceful conversion to the Catholic faith. On the other hand, it wanted to secure the profits from slavery. Since attempts 18  “¿Qué poder tiene mío el Almirante para dar a nadie mis vasallos?” (Martínez de Salinas Alonso 2019, 23). 19  The decree was entitled Real Cédula de 20 de diciembre de 1503 (Lampe 2018, 422).

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at importing workers from Europe had failed, it seemed impossible to develop the colonies without the workforce of the Native Americans.20 These oppositional interests came to clash in the years 1511–1512 when huge debates were ignited by a famous sermon by the Dominican friar Antonio de Montesinos given on 21 December 1511 in Hispaniola.21 In this sermon, Montesinos used the pulpit to air powerful accusations against the encomenderos and colonialists for cruel and illegitimate treatment of the indigenous people. Montesinos used semilegal, dramatic rhetoric that was later echoed by Bartolomé de Las Casas. Here is the start of the sermon: In order to make your sins against the Indians known to you I have come up on this pulpit, I who am a voice of Christ crying in the wilderness of this island, and therefore it behooves you to listen, not with careless attention, but with all you heart and senses, so that you may hear it; for this is going to be the strangest voice that ever you heard, the harshest and the hardest and most awful and most dangerous that ever you expected to hear…. This voice says that you are in mortal sin, for the cruelty and tyranny you use in dealing with these innocent people. Tell me by what right or justice do you keep these Indians in such a cruel and horrible servitude? On what authority have you waged a detestable war against these people who dwelt quietly and peacefully on their own land? […] Are these people not men? Have they not rational souls? Are you not bound to love them as you love yourselves? Do you not understand this? Do you not feel it? (Hanke 2002, 17; translated by Lewis Hanke)22

20  In the late sixteenth century and beginning of the seventeenth century, Spain entered a period of economic crisis. The country became more and more dependent on the flow of agricultural products, money, gold, and silver from America (Elliott 2002a, 217–18). 21  The island that today is the location of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. 22  “Para os los dar a cognoscer [sic] me he sobido [sic] aquí, yo que soy voz de Cristo en el desierto desta isla; y, por tanto, conviene que con atención, no cualquiera sino con todo vuestro corazón y con todos vuestros sentidos, la oigáis; la cual os será la más nueva que nunca oísteis, la más áspera y dura, y más espantable y peligrosa que jamás no pensasteis oír. […] Esta voz […] [os dice] que todos estáis en pecado mortal y en él vivís y morís por la crueldad y tiranía que usáis con estas inocentes gentes. Decid, ¿con qué derecho y con qué justicia tenéis en tan cruel y horrible servidumbre aquestos indios? ¿Con qué auctoridad [sic] habéis hecho tan detestables guerras a estas gentes que estaban en sus tierras mansas y pacíficas, donde tan infinitas dellas, con muertes y estragos nunca oídos, habéis consumido? […] ¿Éstos, no son hombres? ¿No tienen ánimas racionales? ¿No sois obligados a amallos como a vosotros mismos? ¿Esto no entendéis? ¿Esto no sentís?” (B.d. Las Casas 1994, 1761–62).

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Montesinos based his argument against slavery on universal natural law, the fact that all human beings are created by God, all with a rational mind. This early discourse is an example of a forensic discourse on human rights. He denounces the crimes of the encomenderos in a performative way using the pulpit as a semilegal theatrical stage from which he can influence his audience with the ‘facts.’ The Spanish colonialists tried to get Montesinos to withdraw his message, but he did not. On the contrary, he repeated the same message the week after. Montesinos was harshly condemned for his anti-slavery sermons by King Ferdinand and his Dominican superior in Spain, Alonso de Loaysa (Hanke 2002, 18). However, the head of the Dominicans in America, Pedro de Córdoba, supported him. When Montesinos himself submitted a report on these cruelties directly to King Ferdinand, the king appointed a new committee to draw up “proper laws.” These laws were issued in December 1512 and called the Laws of Burgos (Leyes de Burgos). They constituted the first important legal attempt by the Crown to diminish violence in the colonies and secure “humane” treatment for the Indians, but they also created a formal legalization of the encomienda system. In the introduction to the Laws of Burgos, the authors complain that the Indians want to keep their freedom: “[…] todo su fin y desseo es/tener livertad para faser de sy lo que les viene a la voluntad syn aver res/peto a nynguna cossa de vertud […]” (Leyes de Burgos 1991, 58, line 11–13) (“All their goals and desires are to have the freedom to do whatever they like according to their will without showing any respect for virtue […]” (my translation)). The aim of the Laws of Burgos was to limit that freedom and force the Indians into servitude. The laws allowed the Indians to be allotted to Spaniards, forced into cohabitation close to the Spaniards, and coerced into labor. It is stipulated that their old villages must be burned down, so they cannot not return to them. The remarkably detailed laws specify that fifty Indians should be housed in four buildings, each 30 feet in length and 15  feet in width. The amount of provisions (yucca, cotton, and other things) to be given to the Indians is specified. It is true that the laws demanded more humane treatment—for instance, the laws specified that Indians could not be overworked, that all Indians should have a hammock to sleep in, that pregnant women could not be used for any hard labor (Leyes de Burgos 1991, 66), and that the encomenderos were not allowed to punish the Indians by beating them. A system of local lawyers/councilors (visitadores) was created to monitor the encomenderos, and the

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visitador was also in charge of punishing Indians, if needed (Leyes de Burgos 1991, 69). But were these ‘humane’ laws created out of concern for the well-being of the Indians or because, as the authors put it, if the Indians died or got sick, their output would be less profitable for the Spaniards (Leyes de Burgos 1991, 58)? The laws are very ambiguous. They state that the Indians are “free” and not slaves; yet, they make it legal to force them to work and to allocate them to encomenderos. They make it mandatory to give the Indians a salary, but the salary is so small that it is ridiculous. Conversion is seen as a benign aim, legitimized by the papal bull of 1493, but the Laws of Burgos are larded with rules that permit and even encourage othercide (Brunstetter 2012, 6) or cultural genocide (Castro 2007, 11). The Indians were torn from their everyday life and forced to live together in new houses, giving up some old and essential traditions such as polygamy, rites of name-­ giving, and certain funeral rites (Leyes de Burgos 1991, 63–65), which in many Indian cultures were extremely important to maintain the continuity of their cultural identity. Instruction in the Catholic religion and learning how to pray and confess were obligatory. So were Christian baptism and burial (Martínez de Salinas Alonso 1991, 66). It is no wonder that Las Casas said that “some of these laws […] are wicked and cruel and tyrannical and against natural law […] others are impossible, some are irrational and worse than barbaric.”23 The Laws of Burgos have been celebrated for their humaneness; and, when they were reissued in 1991, they were claimed to “mark a legal revolution in the field of human rights.”24 But as argued by María  Luisa Martínez de Salinas Alonso, the Laws of Burgos did not eliminate the encomienda; they only regulated the use of the Indians (Martínez de Salinas Alonso 1991, 19–20). One could, in fact, argue that the Laws of Burgos 23  “Unas fueron […] inicuas y (crueles y) contra ley natural tiránicas […]. Otras fueron imposibles, y otras irracionales y peores que barbáricas” (B.d. Las Casas 1994, 1804). 24  In the prologue to the edition of the Laws of Burgos that came out a year before their quincentenary (1991), the president of the General Council of Spanish Lawyers, Antonio Pedrol Rius, glorified the Laws of Burgos as the fruit of admirable self-criticism (Pedrol Rius 1991, 10). “Le cabe a España la gloria de aquella polémica, la grandeza de aquella autocrítica y la generosidad de su primer resultado que, en lo jurídico, fue el cuerpo de las Leyes Indias sucesivamente promulgadas” (Pedrol Rius 1991, 10). Gustavo Villapalos, rector of the University of Complutense in Madrid, sees them as “an authentic legal revolution in the field of human rights and in the defense of the Indians” (my translation) (“[…] suponen una auténtica revolución jurídica en el campo de los Derechos Humanos y en defensa de los Indios” (Villapalos 1991, 16)).

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created a legal foundation for the perpetuation of the encomienda system or, as Daniel Castro has argued, that they were completely useless since their ambiguity made them open to interpretation and impossible to enforce (Castro 2007, 60). The promulgation of the Laws of Burgos did not stop the violence or the criticism. During the following decades, debates about the status of the Native Americans continued. In 1532, Francisco de Vitoria published his De Indis. De Jure Belli, which was, among other things, an attack on the Inter caetera, published by the pope in May 1493, which gave the Spanish king a right to rule in the New World. In his first six conclusions, Vitoria claims that “1. The Emperor is not the lord of the whole world” and “2. Even if the Emperor were the lord of the world, that would not entitle him to seize the provinces of the Indian aborigines and to erect new lords and put down the former lords or to levy taxes.” About the power of the Pope, he says: “3. “The Pope is not civil or temporal lord of the whole world, in the proper sense of civil lordship and power,” and that: “4. Even if the Supreme Pontiff had secular power over the world, he could not give that power to secular princes.” Moreover, “5. The Pope has temporal power but only so far as it subserves things spiritual” and, finally, “6. The Pope has no temporal power over the Indian aborigines or over other unbelievers” (Vitoria 1532, 12). Late in 1541, Las Casas returned to Spain after an extended stay in America and had a meeting with King Charles V about the maltreatment of the Indians in America. The king was so appalled by Las Casas’ information that he asked him to provide a fuller report on this topic before the Council of the Indies, which he did in 1542. This lengthy report is the first edition of the later and shorter account, Brevísima relación de la destruición de las Indias (1552) (Adorno 2019, 31). It was the Western World’s first atrocity story, which came to play an important role in the fight for the rights of the indigenous people. (This text is treated in Chap. 3 in this book.) The meeting with the Council of the Indies ultimately led to the creation of the New Laws (Nuevas Leyes) that were issued on 20 November 1542. As mentioned above, these laws abolished the encomienda system. The full title was New Laws and Ordinances newly made by his Majesty for the governing of the Indies and the good treatment and preservation of the Indians (Leyes y ordenanzas nuevamente hechas por su Majestad para la gobernación de las Indias y buen tratamiento y conservación de los Indios). These laws sought to “prevent the exploitation of the Indigenous peoples

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of the Americas by the encomenderos by strictly limiting their power and dominion” (Russel and Cohn 2012, 11). The laws required systematic and continuous control with the “excesses and ill treatment” by the so-­ called Audiencias (local councils). More importantly, the laws stated that “for no cause of war nor any other cause whatsoever, though it be under title of rebellion, nor by ransom, nor in any other manner can an Indian be made a slave […]” (Hanke 2002, 91). It stated that all Indians who had been enslaved must be given their liberty. It was also stated that, in the future, no encomienda was to be granted to anyone and that, at the death of the encomenderos, the Indians would revert to the Crown (Hanke 2002, 92). Lewis Hanke wrote that the New Laws were so radical that they could have been written by Las Casas himself (Hanke 2002, 91). Consuelo Varela writes that the New Laws “represent the largest effort ever made by a modern state to rationalize its civilizing acts through a colonial legislation” (Varela 1999, 23; my translation).25 As might be expected, these New Laws met with fierce resistance in America; and, in many places, the New Laws were not implemented. Tello de Sandoval, who was sent to Mexico to enforce the New Laws, had to suspend “some of the more rigorous ones as soon as he arrived in Mexico City” (Hanke 2002, 96). In 1546, the governor, Blasco Núnez de Vela, who was sent out by the king to implement the New Laws in Peru, was met with a revolt by the encomenderos, led by Gonzalo Pizarro and was eventually decapitated by one of the rebels. Protests against the laws were sent to the king from many corners of the empire and from intellectuals inside of Spain—for instance, the Cardinal of Seville, García de Loaysa, who had served as president of the Council of Indies for twenty-one years (Hanke 2002, 95–102). On 20 October 1545, the king revoked the laws—including Law No. 35, which “prohibited the granting of encomiendas and required all encomiendas to revert to the crown at the death of the encomendero” (Hanke 2002, 101). In a royal order of April 1546, the king allowed the viceroy of Mexico, Antonio de Mendoza, to “grant Indians, without civil or criminal jurisdiction over them, as he saw convenient […]” (Hanke 2002, 101). The most important aim of the New Laws, to abolish the slave-like conditions of the Indians, was, thus, completely undermined.

25  “[…] representa el mayor esfuerzo hecho nunca por un Estado moderno para racionalizar su acción civilizadora a través de una legislación colonial” (Varela 1999, 23).

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Therefore, the debate continued; and, in 1550–1551, King Charles V took the unusual step of arranging a courtlike meeting in Valladolid to determine once and for all whether the conquest and the enslavement of the Native Americans were legitimate. The meeting was held in the presence of the young Prince Philip II.  At this unprecedented and famous ‘meeting,’ the royal historian and Aristotelean Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda (1494–1573) was opposed by Bartolomé de Las Casas, defender of the Indians, priest, and historian. Before the meeting, Sepúlveda and Las Casas were already enemies. In 1547, Sepúlveda had denounced Las Casas to the Inquisition for high treason and heresy. Ginés de Sepúlveda felt that Las Casas undermined the papal bull of 1493, which donated the New World to the kings of Castile. As Rolena Adorno explains, “The charge was not only high treason for its denial of the king’s right to dominion; it was also heresy because it denied the pope’s power to donate the Indies to the Spanish kings” (Adorno 2007, 77). At the meeting, Ginés de Sepúlveda argued for a whole day for the Spanish right to conquer America and enslave the Native Americans. He drew on the Bible, on the historian Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, who had made several trips to America and published a contested history of the Indies (La natural hystoria de las Indias) in 1526 (revised in 1535), and on Aristotle’s argument for the idea of natural slavery. He attacked the New Laws fiercely and argued that the Indians “are barbaric, uninstructed in letters and the art of government, and completely ignorant, unreasoning, and totally incapable of learning anything but the mechanical arts; that they are sunk in vice, are cruel, and of such a character that, as nature teaches, they are to be governed by the will of others” (Vega 1992, 15). And he continued that they are “like pigs with their eyes always fixed on the ground.” Furthermore, they are cannibals and pagan, have no laws and no writing; and, therefore, they are “natural slaves” in the way that Aristotle understood that term (Vega 1992, 15).26 After that, Bartolomé de Las Casas spoke for five days, reading his Defense of the Indians (Tratado Segundo), which was intended to show how Sepúlveda was wrong “both in law and in fact” (B.d. Las Casas

26  Ginés de Sepúlveda had translated Aristotle’s Politics into Spanish. Apart from being a royal historian, he was also a tutor for the young Prince Philip.

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1992b, 22).27 He says that Sepúlveda’s Democrates is full of “poisons disguised with honey” (B.d. Las Casas 1992b, 18) that will lead to “throwing into confusion all laws, divine and human” (B.d. Las Casas 1992b, 19). Against Sepúlveda’s claim that the Indians are barbarian, Las Casas claims: “They are not ignorant, inhuman, or bestial. Rather, long before they had heard the word Spaniard, they had properly organized states, wisely ordered by excellent laws, religion, and custom” (B.d. Las Casas 1992b, 42). It is remarkable that Las Casas not only argues for the Indians’ rationality but also for their ability to create a political order. This argument is decisive because it turns the American communities into sovereign political entities that, in principle and in law, have the same status as “nations” just as it was argued in 1532 by the Dominican lawyer, Francisco de Vitoria.28 According to just war theory, which had been prevalent since the medieval period, a sovereign nation may not be attacked if it has not acted aggressively against another nation. This rule is intact even if the nation is full of so-called barbarians. In the early days of the conquest, even Queen Isabella, who otherwise defended the rights of the Indians, said that, if they were cannibals and lived in sin, the Spanish could rightfully wage war on them. But Las Casas claims: “[…] no matter how despicable the crimes they may commit against God, or even against religion among themselves or within their territories, neither the Church nor Christian rulers can take cognizance of them or punish them for these. For there is no jurisdiction, which is the necessary basis for all juridical acts, especially for punishing a person” (B.d. Las Casas 1992b, 55). Significantly, Las Casas moves the discussion beyond the issues of cannibalism and human sacrifice, practices that appalled Europeans and served to support Sepúlveda’s argument for the enslavement of the Indians. He argues that “barbarian” is a relative term, a derogatory word that can 27  There is no original Spanish version of this text, only a Latin version. In the following I’ll quote from Stafford Poole’s translation of the Latin version. A Spanish translation can be found in Vol. 10 of Obras Completas (B. Las Casas 1992a). Las Casas and Sepúlveda never actually met in the courtroom. They presented their pleas individually before the fourteen members of the court. Las Casas’ speech was so long that the court afterward commissioned one of the members to make a summary of his main points. 28  In Vitoria, the right to government is closely connected to their rightful dominion over the territory. He argues that “they are true owners both ‘in public and private law’” (Vitoria 1532, First Relectio, Proposition 24).

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easily be applied to many different nations, including Spain. He mentions that the ancient Romans thought of Spain as a “barbaric and wild people” that needed to be led by the Romans “to a more civilized way of life,” and they used this as an argument to wage war on the Spanish people (B.d. Las Casas 1992b, 43).29 Las Casas rhetorically asks Sepúlveda: Would it not be horrendous if the Romans had thought that they could “with secure right divide all of you among themselves, handing over so many head of both males and females as allotments to individuals?” (B.d. Las Casas 1992b, 43) In this explicit argument against the encomienda system (in reality, a system of slavery), Las Casas uses the Roman-Spanish situation as a parallel example to the Spanish-Indian situation, thus creating a direct equation between Spain and the American nations. The universal equal rights of all nations, on the one hand, and the relativization of the word ‘barbarian,’ on the other, are important arguments for moving rights thinking away from identity politics toward politics and law. As Las Casas argues, we do not need to know who the Indians are to understand that they have rights as a nation. Even barbarians—for example, the Moors and the Turks— have rights as a nation, and so do the Indians: “[…] every nation, no matter how barbaric, has the right to defend itself against a more civilized one that wants to conquer it and take away its freedom” (B.d. Las Casas 1992b, 47–48). Las Casas even argues against the apostolic legitimization of the conquest made by Pope Alexander VI in his papal bull of 1493. Quoting Saint Thomas, he states that everyone has a “free will” and that even the pope has no jurisdiction over unbelievers (B.d. Las Casas 1992b, 61–62). If the Indians refuse to hear the word of Christ, they cannot be forced to do so (B.d. Las Casas 1992b, 178). He quotes Pope Paul III, who, in his bull of 1537 Sublimis Deus, wrote that the “Indians […] must not be deprived of their freedom and the ownership of their property, even though they are outside the faith of Christ. […] They must not be enslaved” (B.d. Las Casas 1992b, 101). The trial of Valladolid was an important event even if the direct political consequences of the trial are not easy to track. Both Sepúlveda and Las Casas declared themselves to be winners of the debate (Galmés 1992,

29  Las Casas distinguishes between four kinds of Barbarians: men who are “cruel, inhuman, wild and merciless,” men, men who do not have a written language, men who are savage, and lawless men who are morally corrupt. Native Americans do not fit within any of the categories (B.d. Las Casas 1992b, 28–38).

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99).30 The word “conquest” was forbidden. Instead, the king ordered the word “pacification” to be used, and he recommended taking land as peacefully as possible. However, the conquests continued, and the system of encomiendas survived. Las Casas might have thought of Valladolid as a personal success; but, to the extent that the encomienda system and the violence continued, it was a failure. Still, the debates in Spain in the sixteenth century were not forgotten, and echoes of the radical claims—especially, of Las Casas—were heard through the centuries, including the debates in nineteenth-century Cuba on black slavery.

Human Rights and Commerce in Nineteenth-Century Cuba In Cuba, there is a popular saying: “sin azúcar no hay país” (“without sugar there is no country”) (Benítez-Rojo 1986, 13). But this also means that, without slavery, there is no country since slavery was intimately related to the sugar industry. The explosive growth of the sugar industry in Cuba in the nineteenth century was only possible due to a massive import of African slaves, and it coincided with the growth of nationalism.31 Though tobacco and coffee production were also important industries, it was the sugar production that essentially drove the development of Cuban modernity, especially in the eighteenth and the nineteenth century when, according to Antonio Benítez-Rojo, sugar “became everything” (Benítez-Rojo 1986, 13). As he writes, sugar never “encountered a sustained counterdiscourse [sic]” (Benítez-Rojo 1986, 13). The growing sugar aristocracy, called the sacarocracia, had enormous power in Cuba and Spain. The sacarocrats were well connected and successful in defending their political rights to exploit slaves. They were even able to defend slavery as a democratic right of the colony and a part of modern liberalism (Sanjurjo 2020, 139).

30  Normally, the result of the debates is seen as “inconclusive”; but, in a recent article, Mary Speer has argued that Ginés de Sepúlveda actually won, due to his close contact as a tutor with Prince Philip (Speer 2020, 272). 31  The rapid development of the sugar industry in the nineteenth century was, in part, due to external causes—for instance, the opening-up of the market in the US, Spain’s liberalizing trade reforms in the late eighteenth century, and especially the revolution in Haiti.

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Increasingly, slavery was organized in accordance with modern economic rationality, and the sugar industry, which engaged most of the slaves, was seen as a locomotive of modernity. As Sibylle Fischer explains: Far from being a remnant of traditional precapitalist practices, slavery in the Caribbean was one of the first and most brutal appearances of modernity. (Fischer 2004, 12)

Right from the beginning, the sugar industry was international. Not only did the sugar industry initiate a tsunami of forced mass migration, but it was built on a transnational network of brokers, agents, and financiers (Becles 1997, 778). The sugar industry was seen as an emblem of progress and sugar mill owners as “the incarnation of entrepreneurial freedom” and the spearhead of modernity. In their own self-understanding, and in the eyes of the world, slave owners were seen as the kind of people who would secure a humanistic development of democracy. Eric Williams observed in the 1940s that both slave owners and politicians argued that enslavement was a means of helping black people achieve contact with civilization (Williams 1943, 70). The development of the sugar industry took a serious step forward in late eighteenth century during the English occupation of Havana in 1762, which “eliminated monopoly arrangements in slave trading and opened of the port of Havana for the entry and sale of enslaved Africans” (Ferrer 2014, 20). New technologies were introduced, such as steam engines, sugar-grinding machines, and eventually railways, which were of immense importance to the sugar industry.32 In 1764, Alejandro O’Reilly, who was adjutant and second-in-command to the Duke of Ricla in Havana, had argued that the happiness of Cuba depended on the import of black slaves.33 On 6 February 1789, the intellectual politician Francisco de Arango y Parreño (1765–1830) published “Primer papel sobre el comercio de negros” (The First Paper on the Negro Trade) in which he argued for “an absolutely unrestricted slave trade” (“la libertad absoluta en el comercio de negros” (Arango y Parreño 1888, 18)). The Crown looked favorably on his suggestions, and the king issued a decree that liberalized 32  The first railway in Cuba, the so-called Güines railroad, was inaugurated on 19 November 1837 (Garcia and Zanetti 1998, 33). 33  “[L]a felicidad de esta Isla depende en la mayor parte de la introducción de negros y así tengo por utilísimo al rey el quitar desde luego todos los impuestos y el permitir que se hagan las contratas con extranjeros que hagan más conveniencia” (Gomariz 2004, 47).

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the trade and “gave permission for any Spaniard to purchase slaves in foreign ports and to introduce and sell them free of duty in designated ports in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Spanish Santo Domingo and Caracas” (Ferrer 2014, 23). In February 1789, the king also published a decree to regulate the treatment of the slaves, a “black code” that was meant to “clarify the obligations and rights of slaves, masters and the state.” For instance, it stated that the slave “must obey and respect the master as a father,” and it authorized the use of “imprisonment, shackles, chains, clubs, or stocks” when the slave failed to obey, but it also specified that whipping could not exceed twenty-five lashes (Ferrer 2014, 25) and that the town councils and members of the clergy had the right to inspect for abuses by slave owners and masters. Again, we see that the regulation of the violence of slavery goes hand in hand with the legitimization of slavery. After the revolution in Haiti, the push for free slave trade became even more intense. Though the white aristocracy in Cuba was frightened by the revolutionary developments in Saint Domingue, Arango y Parreño tried to calm everyone, arguing that, in Cuba, the form of slavery was much more benign than in French Saint Domingue. As he wrote in a letter to the king in November 1791: “The French have seen [the slaves] as animals, the Spanish have seen them as human beings” (my translation) (“Los franceses los han mirados como bestias y los españoles como hombres” (Arango y Parreño 1888, 49)). The French had used “excessive rigor” and violence to instill maximum fear in the slaves, whereas the Cuban slaves had been treated well and had the right to complain if they were not. According to Arango y Parreño, the Cuban slaves were among the happiest in the world (“los más felices del mundo”).34 Arango y Parreño helped create the myth that Cuban slavery was benign, a myth that the British consul to Cuba, David Turnbull (1794–1851), and the Irish abolitionist Richard Robert Madden (1798–1886), who was superintendent in Cuba in the years 1835–1839, later contradicted. As Arthur F. Corwin has explained, the Cuban agriculturists were “less concerned with the dangers of an excessive slave population than with prosperity” (Corwin 2014, 14). The early optimism about slavery in Cuba was also due to the fact that “only one in every four inhabitants was a 34  Arango y Parreño, “Representación hecha á S. M. con motivo de la sublevación de esclavos en los dominios franceses de la isla de Santo Domingo,” 20 November 1791) (Arango y Parreño 1888, 49).

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slave” (Corwin 2014, 14). However, this was about to change. Due to increased importation of Africans from 1791 to 1820, the number of Africans in Cuba grew considerably. As noted by Ada Ferrer, the number of persons sold as slaves “jumped almost 600 percent” from 1188 persons to 6683  in the first two years of the liberalization of the trade (Ferrer 2014, 25). In 1817, Spain was forced by England to abolish the slave trade, but the decree allowed three years of trade before enforcement, a loophole exploited by the Cuba sugar industry. Between 1816 and 1820, 110,000 slaves were imported (Arango 2006, 24). In 1818, there were 800 sugar plantations in Cuba (Arango 2006, 239). And although illegal in principle after 1820, the slave trade continued until the 1860s (Sanjurjo 2020, 140). From the 1820s, many intellectuals feared that black people would soon outnumber the white population.35 In fact, in 1840, almost half of the population were slaves (Bergad 2007, xii). Several rebellions among the enslaved population raised the fear that Cuba might become a new Haiti. The most important rebellion was the Aponte Rebellion in 1812, which took place around Puerto Príncipe (now Camagüey), where there was a revolt on five plantations that later spread to plantations near Havana (Childs 2006, 1–3). The rebellion was brutally put down and ended with the public execution of many rebels, including the leader José Antonio Aponte. After the Aponte Rebellion, the most important event was the so-called Escalera Rebellion (1843–44), named escalera (ladder) because suspects were tied to a ladder and subjected to painful torture to extract information from them. Though several acts of rebellion have been documented, it is still debated whether the huge rebellion feared by the whites was actually imminent or whether it was white fear that ‘created’ an imagined huge black rebellion. The small rebellious acts that took place were met with very violent and cruel repression, executed by the Captain General Leopoldo O’Donnell (Gott 2004, 65). It is certain that, with the growing number of slaves, fear in the white population escalated during the nineteenth century. Though Cuban authorities censored any mention of the revolution in Haiti from newspapers and, as described by Sybille Fischer, tried to draw a cordon sanitaire

35  Between 1790 and 1820, Corwin registers 225,574 legal and 56,000 illegal slaves (Corwin 2014, 15–16).

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around the island “to interrupt the flow of information and people,”36 the Haitian revolution was central to developments in Cuba, and the event was well known among government officials, plantation owners, and the enslaved laborers (Fischer 2004, 4). Pressure increased on the sacarocracy both internally and internationally from abolitionists and anti-slavery campaigners. Spain was slow to develop a real anti-slavery society. In England, The Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade was founded in 1787, and the British were extremely active in trying to block the slave trade in the nineteenth century. In France, La Societé des Amis des Noirs was created in 1788. In Spain, the Spanish Abolitionist Society was not founded until 1864 (Corwin 2014, 20). However, this did not mean that an anti-slavery campaign did not exist. Already in the liberal days of the Cortes de Cádiz (1810–1814), abolition of the slave trade was suggested by Agustín Argüelles (1776–1844). In a speech given in 1810, he argues that “[t]rafficking […] in slaves is not only contrary to the purity and liberality of the feelings of the Spanish nation, but also to the spirit of its religion. Trading in the blood of our brothers is horrendous, atrocious and inhumane and the National Congress must not hesitate for a single moment between its high principles and the interest of certain individuals” (Sanjurjo 2020, 140). In 1811, the Mexican José Miguel Guridi Alcócer (1763–1828) published eight principles for the gradual abolition of slavery. The first one was the absolute prohibition of the slave trade; the third was that children born by slaves should not be considered slaves; the fifth was that slaves should receive a salary (Galván Rodríguez 2014, 20–21). International pressure was created in February 1815 when a declaration was published after the negotiations at the Congress of Vienna. Here, the institution of slavery was condemned, and the participating nations promised to work toward the total extinction of the slave trade. Under pressure, Spain promised to end the slave trade within eight years if they were compensated by the British (Reinalda 2009, 40); (Saco 2009, 335). 36  Sibylle Fischer explains the restrictions in this way: “Diplomatic correspondence between the colonial administrators in the region and the Spanish authorities between 1791 and the 1820s is replete with calls for vigilance and admonitions to maintain controls ‘in order to prevent the entrance … of any reports about what is happening in the French Islands and Empire.’ and: ‘Any reports that might have spread in writing, or that in general make known the disorders’ are to be suppressed, and French and other foreigners are strictly forbidden from entering the territory” (Fischer 2004, 5).

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This led later to the agreement of 1817 in which Spain agreed to end the slave trade in 1820, which did not happen. To the contrary, the trade grew (Saco 2009, 342). In 1822, an important priest, professor of philosophy and physics, and politician, Felix Varela y Morales (1788–1853), representative of the Cuban colony in the Cortes of Spain, drafted a legal proposal, Proyecto y Memoria para la extinción de la esclavitud, to end slavery gradually. He claimed that Cuba was a colossus but a colossus built on sand. He foresaw bloody rebellions if nothing was done to prevent them. He claimed authority for the proposal by referring to the general will of the people of Cuba (“la voluntad general del pueblo de la Isla de Cuba”) (Varela y Morales 2001, 115). Later, two intellectuals who had studied under Varela in Havana— namely, the sociologist and historian José Antonio Saco (1797–1879) and the writer and lawyer Domingo del Monte (1804–1853)—argued powerfully against the continuance of the institution of slavery. José Antonio Saco published some essays in the late 1820s and the early 1830s in which he argued for the abolition of slavery not on a humanitarian but a scientific basis. In “Análisis de una obra sobre Brasil” (1828), he argued that it would be a political and international danger to Cuba if they protected the slave trade and that it would be much more advantageous to increase the white workforce by inviting more Europeans to come to Cuba (Corwin 2014, 58). In an essay entitled “Memoria sobre la vagrancia en la isla de Cuba” (1831), he denounced vagrancy and related it to the indolence of white people, caused by the fact that they had relegated the work to the slaves. Protests from the sacarocracy were loud; and, in 1834, José Antonio Saco was forced into exile by the conservative Captain General of Cuba, Miguel Tacón y Rosique (1775–1855) (Opatrný 1994, 43). Domingo del Monte was part of the sugar aristocracy in Cuba. He married into the so-called Alfonso-Aldama-Madan clan, which “took full advantage of the sugar boom during the first four decades of the nineteenth century and became one of the island’s wealthiest families” (Aching 2015, 37). According to Aching, by 1860 the family owned approximately forty slave plantations and 15,000 slaves (Aching 2015, 37). However, Domingo del Monte was also a literary scholar and writer, interested in creating a true Cuban national literature, as well as a harsh critic of slavery. After he failed to create a Cuban Academy of Literature in 1833, he formed in 1834 a literary circle that had regular tertulias in his own home. This circle of liberal intellectuals was highly instrumental in promoting the

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anti-slavery cause and creating a Cuban anti-slavery literature. With the exception of Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, who lived in Camagüey and wrote the anti-slavery novel Sab (composed in the mid-1830s, published in 1841; Chap. 6 is dedicated to this novel), all anti-slavery writers in the mid-nineteenth century were associated with Del Monte’s literary circle, and they all wrote anti-slavery literature in the 1830s. Anselmo Suárez y Romero (1818–1878) wrote Francisco, el ingenio o las delicias del campo (1838) (Francisco, The Sugar Mill or The Delights of the Countryside), Cirilo Villaverde (1812–1894) wrote an early version of Cecilia Valdés (1839 and 1882), and the Columbian immigrant Félix Tanco y Bosmeniel (1797–1871) wrote Petrona y Rosalia (1838, published in 1925) (Fischer 2004, 107); (Branche 2001, 69); (Casanova-Marengo 2002, 24). It was into this circle that the enslaved mulatto and poet, Juan Francisco Manzano (1797–1854), was invited to read his poem “Thirty Years” (“Treinta años”) in 1835, which led to a collection of money that bought him his freedom in 1836. It was also thanks to an invitation from Del Monte that Manzano wrote his Autobiografía de un esclavo (Autobiography of a Slave) (written in 1835, published in 1840), which was to become the only autobiography in Spanish written by an enslaved person within the Spanish Empire. (Chapter 7 is dedicated to Juan Francisco Manzano’s autobiography and his tragedy Zafira.) Both José Antonio Saco and Domingo del Monte have been accused of being more preoccupied with the fate of Cuba than with the well-being of the enslaved population. One of the motives behind their anti-slavery campaigns was a desire to whiten Cuba, to keep Cuba, because of its black majority, from being considered a primitive nation (Aching 2015, 39). According to Jerome Branche, the texts of both Saco and Del Monte “reveal a sense of paranoia over racial coexistence at the time as well as the supremacist desire for a White and hence ‘civilized’ future Cuba” (Branche 2001, 72). Slavery seemed to contradict the development of a modern, civilized state (Casanova-Marengo 2002, 23). There is a racist strain in the prose of even anti-slavery intellectuals. However, Saco and Del Monte were two of the most important figures in the anti-slavery struggle in the nineteenth century on an island where the political sphere was very much in favor of the white sacarocracy. Saco, Del Monte, and other liberal writers of the period, including Félix Varela and Parreño y Arango, also demonstrate the historical complexity of the slavery debates in the Spanish Empire. The discussion of slavery was influenced by simultaneous debates about representation of

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the colonies in the Spanish parliament, by a growing sense of nationalism, and ultimately by the fight for independence from Spain. Most other Spanish colonies in America attained independence in the early nineteenth century. Cuba was too valuable for Spain to be allowed independence, and Cuba was consistently called that “forever faithful island” by Spanish politicians. As far as the white sacarocracy was concerned, Cubans had every right to develop the modern industry of sugar with the work of enslaved people. Abolition was denounced as anti-democratic and as undermining property rights (Sanjurjo 2020, 141). Despite the radical proposals for abolition of slavery in the Court of Cádiz and in the press and journals, the interests of the Spanish Crown and the Cuban sugar aristocracy were too strong to allow abolition. In the constitution of 1837, which created a representative monarchy, it was decreed that “Spanish colonies would be ruled by ‘special laws’, restricting the access of colonial subjects to the civil rights proclaimed in the new constitution and withdrawing its political representation in the Cortes” (Sanjurjo 2020, 143).

Slavery and Human Rights in the Spanish Empire, Sixteenth and Nineteenth Centuries From the sixteenth century until the nineteenth century, according to Ada Ferrer, Spain develops from “an empire of conquest” into an “empire of commerce,” a distinction proposed by Montesquieu and Abbé Raynal (Ferrer 2014, 21). Obviously, there are huge political and historical differences in the slavery and human rights debate in the two periods: the first period’s discussions are (mainly) related to the enslavement of Native Americans, the latter period’s discussions are (mainly) related to the enslavement of Africans. The early modern discourse on red slavery is located in the intersection of old medieval laws with modern colonialism and international law; the discourse on black slavery is related to modern capitalism and international abolitionism. The debate about human rights in the sixteenth century was primarily led by theologians. The debate about human rights in the nineteenth century occurred within a liberal and secular context (Schmidt-Nowara 2011, 157). However, there are interesting similarities between the form of slavery and the rights thinking of both periods, and there is a strong inspiration in the late period from the early period.

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Red and black slavery are linked because, at a certain point, it was suggested that Native American slaves could simply be replaced by stronger African slaves. Thus, Native Americans and Africans were thought to be fungible. Notwithstanding their differences, red and black slavery are also linked because they are both understood within the framework of a centralized empire ruled from Spain, even in the later, more liberal period. As Christopher Schmidt-Nowara has phrased it: “The empire of absolutist Spain haunted the debates over the empire of liberal Spain” (Schmidt-­ Nowara 2001, 130). The rules and laws regulating both forms of slavery were issued by the Spanish Crown; and, in both periods, the Crown is in ‘open’ conflict with the settlers to America. Conquerors, colonialists, and creoles, encomenderos, and sacarocrats all defend their right to pursue their own economic interests. They defend their property rights, including their property rights over enslaved people, and their right to secure a stable and cheap workforce which is important for the expansion of their business. They also push for liberal trade laws that make it possible to import enslaved people and sell agricultural products on international markets. However, red and black slavery are also linked because the arguments against enslavement that were primarily developed in connection with indigenous American slavery shaped the later arguments against black slavery. Despite huge differences in circumstances, the early discussions of rights could be transferred into other contexts. Among the philosophers and lawyers who participated in the debate in mid-sixteenth century, the prolific Dominican monk Bartolomé de Las Casas (1484–1566) was the most prominent. Though a controversial figure in his own day, his late writings are some of the most radical that we have denouncing slavery and promoting the rights of the Native Americans. It is, therefore, no wonder that his specter continued to haunt the human rights debates in later centuries, as has been demonstrated by Schmidt-­ Nowara in “The Specter of Las Casas” (Schmidt-Nowara 2001). As Rolena Adorno has argued, Las Casas is a “point of convergence” for many contemporary and much later writers (Adorno 2007, 15). When Juan Antonio Llorente edited and published some of Bartolomé de Las Casas’ more radical writings in 1822 in Paris, he argued that there was an analogy between the two forms of enslavement that made it possible to transfer Las Casas’ rhetoric against the enslavement of Native Americans to the enslavement of black Africans:

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Las razones que daba [Las Casas] en favor del derecho de libertad individual a los Americanos son aplicables á otras varias situaciones políticas que tengan analogía con las circunstancias en que se vieron aquellos Indios. (Llorente 1822, iii) (The arguments, presented by [Las Casas] for the Americans’ individual right to freedom are applicable to other, different political situations that are analogous to the circumstances in which those Indians found themselves (my translation).)

This point of view was shared by the French abolitionist Abbé Gregoire, who argued in favor of equality among all races and was an influential member of La Societé des Amis des Noirs de Paris. He placed Las Casas at the center of his own fight for the abolition of black slavery and is often called “the second Las Casas” (Arias 2008, 283–84). Both of them defended Las Casas from the accusation that he had recommended enslavement of black people (Arias 2008, 288). In America, Las Casas was embraced primarily as the protector of the Indians but sometimes also of the creoles. Fray Servando Teresa de Mier, who also edited Las Casas’ Brevísima relación for a later publication (Arias 2008, 286), called Las Casas “the father of the creoles of New Spain as well as the protector of the Indians” (Adorno 2007, 81). Las Casas was also cited in the debates about the enslavement of Africans. According to Schmidt-Nowara, Las Casas “defined the terms of the debate over the African slave trade to the Indies because the resort to the traffic in captives was always closely connected to the struggle over encomienda, the enslavement of Indians, and the rights of the conquerors” (Schmidt-Nowara 2013a, 237). José Antonio Saco (1797–1879), who denounced the brutal slave trade and the institution of slavery and wrote a history of slavery (Historia de la esclavitud, 1879), identified with Bartolomé de Las Casas (Schmidt-­ Nowara 2001, 136). For Saco, Las Casas was “one of the men who most honors Spain and humanity” (Schmidt-Nowara 2001, 146). Indeed, the liberal Court of Cadiz (1810–1814), which suggested a principle of equality among all subjects within the Spanish empire, was dominated by Lascasians (Schmidt-Nowara 2001, 95). William Wilberforce, the British abolitionist who worked for the international abolition of the slave trade and was an inspiration for Agustín de Argúelles in Cadiz (Sanjurjo 140) and also a close friend of Félix Varela,

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was himself inspired by Bartolomé de Las Casas. And the Anglo-Spanish political thinker and theologian, Joseph Blanco White (José María Blanco y Crespo) (1775–1841), who translated Wilberforce’s abolitionist texts into Spanish, “transposed Bartolomé de Las Casas’ defense of America and the Indians onto Africa and the Africans” in his own abolitionist texts (Schmidt-Nowara 2013b, 171). The freedom fighter, José Marti (1853–1895), would later write in a story for American children, that it was as if the good friar was still alive.37 Antonio Benítez-Rojo, who has written one of the most interesting books on Cuba, even calls Las Casas a “proto-Caribbean.” By that, he does not mean that Las Casas was a good person who should be celebrated in the Caribbean area but that his historical texts’ “conflictive concerns made up a kind of leitmotiv or leading rhythm to which, necessarily, modern Caribbean historiography would have to connect […]” (Benítez-Rojo 1996, 110). Whether bad or good, there is no doubt that the influence of the early sixteenth-century debates—particularly, the ideas of Las Casas— was great in the nineteenth century. It has sometimes been argued that the natural rights formalized by Dominican monks in the sixteenth century cannot be human rights since they have a Catholic foundation (Beuchot 1994, 13). Rights thinking has also been seen as merely a “colonial tool” that does not contradict but is located at the “root of modern racial ideology” (Lantigua 2015, 337). However, in many ways, the rights thinking of the sixteenth century was more modern and radical than later and more liberal conceptions of human rights. It was radical and modern because the main arguments for the rights of the Native Americans were political and legal in nature, because there was an insistence on the autonomy and freedom of the indigenous people, and not least because there was a direct link between universal rights and the understanding of the individual as a social being, which moves human rights thinking beyond the later liberal tradition of human rights, which is narrower and more individualized. The development between the sixteenth and the nineteenth century should not be understood as moving from a semi-medieval Catholic understanding of natural rights to a modern, secular version of human rights. Paradoxically, the most radical anti-slavery thoughts and modern 37  José Martí: “cuatrocientos años hace que vivió el Padre Las Casas y parece que está vivo todavía, porque fue bueno.” (Martí 1979, 127) (“it is four hundred years since the Father Las Casas lived, and it seems he is still alive because he was a good man” (my translation)).

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human rights thinking were formulated by the theologians in the sixteenth century, whereas the liberals of the nineteenth century were distracted by many complex, pragmatic concerns that inhibited their rights thinking. Sometimes, you get the feeling that abolitionists in the nineteenth century make references to the sixteenth century to remind their contemporary audiences (and themselves) about the ideals that once dominated Spanish rights thinking.38 The essential arguments for universal human rights in the Spanish context are ideally color-blind, but racism was always part of slavery and race, ethnicity, and cultural specificity played a huge role in human rights discourses. A closer look at some of the most important literary texts of the two periods reveals that there were no easy steps toward universal rights. All the way, rights had to be negotiated in relation to racial prejudices, racialized social structures, and different economic, political, and religious agendas. Comparing the two forms of slavery gives us a more detailed understanding on not only how racial prejudice but also how interracial solidarity played into the discussion of rights. Though the slave society is a basically Manichaean society, texts from both periods demonstrate an interest in the effects of miscegenation, syncretism, and cultural interrelations between different races. In the following chapters, I shall discuss how literary texts negotiate the balance between race (otherness) and rights. To what extent do the texts draw on and reflect the complexity of historical and legal discussions of rights? And how do they argue for the rights in concrete political and cultural contexts? As argued in the introduction, no arguments for rights were self-evident in the two peak periods of slavery. Different rhetorical and literary strategies were chosen to denounce slavery, according to the context and audience(s).

38  Seen from the British point of view, it has been a common opinion that the British Empire was committed to liberty and that “the British brought freedom to the Americas, where the Spanish brought only despotism” (Berquist 2010, 182). However, Spain contributed with rights thinking that was much more radical than even in the British context, which had great impact on later abolitionists. This is a polemical point and in order to defend it, a much longer discussion would be necessary. Suffice it to say here that the Spanish history of human rights played an important role that is not always acknowledged.

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Speer, Mary. 2020. Tutoring the king: Juan Gines de Sepulveda's victory over Bartolome de las Casas. Bulletin of Hispanic studies (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press: 1996) 97 (3): 271–287. https://doi.org/10.3828/ bhs.2020.15. Tierney, Brian. 1997. The idea of natural rights: Studies on natural rights, natural law and church law, 1150–1625, Emory university studies in law and religion. Vol. 5. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press. Varela, Consuelo. 1999. Introducción biográfica y crítica. In Brevísima relación de la destruición de las Indias, ed. Consuelo Varela , 9–54. Madrid: Castalia. Clásicos Castalia Varela y Morales, Félix. 2001. Obras. Vol. II. edited by Eduardo etal. Torre-­ Cuevas. Habana: Ediciones Imagen Contemporánea. Vega, Bartolomé de la. 1992. Summary of Sepúlveda’s position. In Defense of the Indians, ed. Stafford Poole, 15. Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press, de Kalb. Villapalos, Gustavo. 1991. Introducción. In Leyes de Burgos de 1512 y Leyes de Valladolid de 1513: reproducción facsimilar de los manuscritos que se conservan en el Archivo General de Indias (Sevilla) en las Secciones de Indiferente General leg. 419, lib. IV y Patronato, legajo 174 ramo 1, respectivamente, edited by María Luisa Martínez de Salinas Alonso, 15–16. Burgos: Egeria. Vitoria, Francisco de. 1532. De Indis. De Jure belli. The First Relectio of the Reverend Father, Brother Franciscus de Victoria on the Indians Lately Discovered. Part 2. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/De_Indis_De_Jure_Belli/Part_2. Williams, Eric. 1943. Laissez faire, sugar and slavery. Political Science Quarterly 58 (1): 67–85. http://www.jstor.org.ez.statsbiblioteket.dk:2048/stable/ 2144428. Wilson, Carter A. 1996. Racism from slavery to advanced capitalism, SAGE series on race and ethnic relations. Vol. 17. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. Zamora, Margarita. 1993. Reading Columbus. Reprint 2019 ed., Latin American literature and culture. Vol. 9. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Zavala, Silvio. 2016. New viewpoints on the Spanish colonization of America. Reprint 2016 ed. Anniversary Collection. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

CHAPTER 3

Allegorical Theatricality: Horror and Human Rights in Bartolomé de Las Casas’ Atrocity Story A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies

Being a spectator of calamities taking place in another country is a quintessential modern experience […]. —Sontag (2003, 16) God does not make anybody the slave of another but grants the same free will to everybody. —B.d. Las Casas (1990, 35) (My translation: “Dios no hace a uno siervo del otro sino que concede a todos el mismo libre albedrío.”)

This chapter has been printed in a shorter version: “The Political Agency of Victims in Atrocity Tales by Bartolomé de las Casas: the Spanish Origin of Human Rights” (Simonsen 2016). © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 K.-M. Simonsen, Slavery and the Forensic Theatricality of Human Rights in the Spanish Empire, Palgrave Studies in Literature, Culture and Human Rights, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31531-2_3

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In his early life, Bartolomé de Las Casas (1484–1566) was an adventurer, an encomendero,1 and slave owner in Cuba. Later, he became a Dominican friar, an historian, a political philosopher, an ethnographer, an activist, and a theologian. However, he has come to be seen more and more in recent years as an important legal philosopher (Adorno 2007, 70–72); (Orique and Roldán-Figueroa 2018, 2); (Cárdenas Bunsen 2014, 793, 798). He was trained as a canon lawyer and spent much of his life developing the legal principles that would help defend the rights of enslaved and oppressed Native Americans. His thinking is always directly informed by real-life experiences; and, as Francisco Quijano has argued, it is political in its nature (Quijano 2015, 8–9). Despite his many travels, his ethnographic experiments with ‘peaceful colonialism,’ his work as a priest, and his political activism, there is a juridical basis to all his work. The legalistic nature of his political thinking and its foundation in ius naturae (natural rights) is one of the reasons it is widely accepted today that Bartolomé de Las Casas was a forerunner as an advocate of human rights (Ginzburg 2017, 253) (Mayer 2014, 1122); (Beuchot 1994, 13); (Alves and Moreira 2013, 86). Paolo G. Carozza has called him “the midwife of modern human rights talk” (Carozza 2003, 289). L. Pereña and V.  Abril called him a “‘classic’ of human rights” (“un ‘clásico’ de los Derechos Humanos” (Las Casas et al. 1974, 12)). Though Las Casas has been accused of being too “theoretical” (Castro 2007, 122), Mauricio Beuchot has argued that, for Las Casas, natural rights were not merely lofty ideals. Las Casas distilled a number of universal natural rights that he argued ought to be respected by civil and positive law (Beuchot 1994, 45).2 Brian Tierney, who is one of the most renowned experts on natural rights, has argued that, contrary to what others have stated, rights in Las Casas are both objective and subjective (Tierney 1997, 275–76). Moreover, in a recent book, David Lantigua has argued that Las Casas and the Thomistic philosophy of the Salamanca school are significant for the later development of universal rights and international law because the Spanish philosophers and theologians treated Native Americans not only as savages or barbarians but also as “foreign infidels,” which is a legal 1  An encomendero is an owner of an encomienda to which Indians have been allocated (encommended). 2  “[…] Las Casas postulaba el ius naturae o derecho natural, el cual hacía brotar ciertos derechos que debían ser respetados por la misma ley civil o derecho positivo” (Beuchot 1994, 45).

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category. Thus, in Spanish discourse, Native Americans are “the political subjects of rights in a manner unlike classical barbarians or natural slaves” (Lantigua 2020, 2). Las Casas is interested not only in abstract, ideal, or religious justice but also in the temporal, legal, and political order of justice. This may also be seen in his Brevísima relación de la destruición de las Indias (A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies) (1552) (hereinafter Brevísima),3 which is primarily known for its propagandistic character. Brevísima is the most widely read work by Las Casas and probably the first modern atrocity story in Europe. It is an emotionally loaded, hyperbolic, theatrical, and detailed account of Spanish brutality in the New World. The book was addressed to the Spanish prince, Philip II, and a contemporary Spanish audience but was read widely in competing empires, in centuries to come. It became highly instrumental in creating the Black Legend about the brutality of the Spanish conquest. It has been criticized for its inaccuracies, exaggerations, and Manichaean worldview; but, as I will argue, the text’s charged rhetoric must be understood in relation to its historical context as a reaction to the continued abuse of Indians’ rights in the middle of the sixteenth century and in relation to its genre. Its allegorical theatricality serves specific purposes. As I shall demonstrate, the aim of Brevísima is not only to denounce physical violence but also to demonstrate the violation of rights. The political framing of the atrocity story, the relative specificity of the location of the crimes, and the persistent inquiry into the legal foundation of the ‘war against the Indians’ add concrete acuity to its indignant rhetoric. The choice of allegorical form is connected with this larger aim. An allegory is a representation in which a symbol, character, place, or event may be interpreted to represent a hidden meaning with moral or political significance. In the allegory, there is a division between two layers of meaning: a ‘literal’ meaning and another more essential meaning. Literally, the Greek word allegoria means “veiled language,” but classical allegory is not veiled in the sense that it strives toward the occult. On the contrary, it strives for the public exposure of the hidden meaning. The Greek term ‘allegory’ is formed from two words: allos (“other”) and 3  In this chapter, I shall refer to Brevísima relación de la destruición de las Indias in Obras completas, vol. 10, ed. by Ramón Hernández (B.d. Las Casas 1988b). For the English version, see A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, trans. by Nigel Griffin (B.d. Las Casas 1992d).

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agoreuein (“to speak in public”) (Copeland and Struck 2010, 281). Allegorical expression is oriented toward the public and common sphere. Its higher level(s) of meaning is (are) meant to be understood or guessed by the audience, so that the allegory adds general significance to particularized events. In Las Casas’ atrocity story, the allegorical form adds political, religious, moral, and legal significance to what might at first seem to be a list of various atrocities committed by different conquerors. I argue that, through its forensic-allegorical form, Las Casas’ atrocity story manages to speak to a contemporary audience in an understandable moral language, to avoid inappropriate voyeurism in the reader, and to elevate individual suffering into a story of political guilt. He thereby transforms the audience from passive readers into moral and semi-legal judges. Borrowing a concept from Augusto Boal, the audience are turned into spect-actors (Boal 2006, 6). Through the engagement with the theatrical spectacle, they become actors on the public ‘stage’ of moral conversation. Though the atrocity story uses a highly emotional rhetoric that is meant to make the audience feel the sufferings of the victims, the aim is not to create empathy with the individual victim but to create moral indignation at the unjustified violence of Spanish conquerors. The allegorical form inserts the horror into a recognizable ideological frame that makes it relatable to the audience. In her influential book on the invention of human rights, Lynn Hunt has argued that modern human rights were dependent on the sentimental epistolary novel of the eighteenth century, which created empathy with others alien to oneself and made it possible to feel their suffering and understand them as human subjects with an interiority. She argues that the epistolary novel “enabled readers to empathize across class, sex, and national lines” (Hunt 2008, 38). Las Casas does not create empathy with individualized victims. He does not make us feel their subjective interiority. However, he does something that might be more efficient when it comes to creating an awareness of human rights abuses in the audience. He elevates the sufferings of the Indians to a politico-allegorical level that give them significance outside of a specific situation of torture. By doing this, he positions the Indians as politically autonomous beings and makes it clear that it is not only the destiny of the Indians that is at stake but also the morality of the audience. As opposed to Daniel Castro, who claims that Las Casas presents the Indians as helpless victims in a way that robs them of volition and capacity

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for self-defense (Castro 2007, 113), I argue that Las Casas manages to depict the Indians as victims without removing their potential political agency. He does this through five rhetorical strategies: First, Las Casas stresses that violence is not just a crime against innocent bodies and “miserable” victims but a crime against sovereign beings, citizens of a political order. Ius gentium is formulated as a set of political rights. Second, so that no one sees violent incidents as discrete or exceptional, he repeats depictions of violent torture scenes ad nauseam. Paradoxically, the repetition diminishes the drama of violence itself and turns it into a series that demonstrates a cruel pattern of violence rather than individualized agony. This undermines the potential empathy that, as mentioned above, has often been claimed as important in the depiction of human rights abuses (Hunt 2008). Third, he anonymizes the perpetrators but names some of the victims—primarily, kings of Indian communities. This is essential to give political life to the Indians and to generalize the accusatory structure. Fourth, he undermines any voyeuristic interest in the exotic victims and depicts them as sovereign, universal human beings. Thus, I disagree with those who accuse Las Casas of seeing Indians as barbarians—for instance, Margaret R. Greer, Walter D. Mignolo, and Maureen Quilligan, who have claimed that Las Casas defined the Indians by a single criterion: barbarie negative (negative barbarism) (Greer et al. 2007, 7). Finally, the allegorical level of Las Casas’ atrocity story contains three different understandings of “nature.” These meanings are meant to coalesce into a larger allegorical meaning, but they potentially open up contradictory concepts of natural rights. I shall discuss this in more detail but argue that each of them has an illustrative function within the atrocity story. Throughout the analysis, I wish to stress Las Casas’ universalistic approach, which also offers a pragmatic defense of him against the criticism that he was not interested in the culture of the Indians. My argument is that, in a period of intense debates about the exotic barbarians in the New World and their pagan, primitive, and ‘cannibalistic’ cultures, Las Casas, to his credit, downplays cultural differences. Though there is a risk this may lead to an assimilatory politics, it is preferable to exoticism in a situation of conflict between radically different cultures and war between unequal powers. I shall discuss this point in relation to Daniel R. Brunstetter, who has argued that Las Casas is an example of “inegalitarian egalitarianism” and that, while defending the Indians against physical violence, he commits a “cultural othercide” (Brunstetter 2012, 64). This last point is relevant to a general understanding of the capacity of human rights

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defenders to accommodate a radically different Other who may reject our values, including the values that underlie our defense of the Other’s human rights. It is an historical fact that Las Casas was a Dominican monk who worked as a missionary and wished to convert all Indians to Christianity. He can legitimately be accused of working from within the very center of the Empire. But the crucial question is how he used that position to move toward an acknowledgment of the Indians’ sovereign rights. As David Lantigua has argued, the orthodoxy of Thomistic intellectuals, including Las Casas, may have helped them make radical claims for reform. In his words, they “demonstrated the reflexive, reformatory, and subversive force of orthodox convictions rooted in the apostolic tradition” (Lantigua 2015, 315). Some of the more radical points of Las Casas’ rights thinking are developed in three late works: De Thesauris (1563) (called by Las Casas his “testament”), Tratado de las doce dudas (1564) (Treatise of the Twelve Doubts) (called his “codicil”), and De Regia Potestate (published posthumously in 1571 in Frankfurt). The first two texts were presumably presented to Philip II in 1566 just before Las Casas’ death on 20 July 1566 (Losada 1992, III). In these texts, Las Casas argues not only for the Native Americans’ rationality, dignity, and rights as subjects to the Spanish Crown but for their basic liberty as human beings and their rights as free, sovereign people who may reject Spanish rule and even reject the offer of Christian salvation. Ideas about the sovereignty of the Native American communities and arguments against slavery were incorporated in some form already in Brevísima and other mid-century texts such as Entre los remedios (1542) (Among the Means), Historia de las Indias (1527–1561),4 Tratado segundo (Apología) (1552, Defense of the Indians), and other treatises from 1552. Finally, I argue that the combination of a hyperbolic, demonstrative rhetoric and an allegorical form of theatricality in Brevísima is motivated by the forensic aim: to denounce crime and convince a broader public of the lack of justification for the Conquest. In order to discuss the political aspects of this theatricality, I shall offer a brief, contrastive comparison with one of the famous illustrations of Brevísima made by the Flemish 4  Historia de las Indias comprises the first three decades of the conquest and colonization. It was written from 1527 until 1561 (Fernández 1994, 16–17) but not published until the nineteenth century (Fernández 1994, 28).

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artist Théodore de Bry for the French edition of that book in 1598. I focus especially on the representation of the dichotomy between perpetrator and victim that is so salient in Brevísima (and in many other atrocity stories) and how that dichotomy is handled, respectively, by De Bry and by Las Casas. In Brevísima, we see the contours of a philosophy of modern democracy based on rights and modern international law. We also see that Las Casas is a forerunner of using forensic theatricality in an atrocity story. Due to its rhetorical complexity, Brevísima raises some central questions about the specificities of the genre of the atrocity story. What is the balance between fact and argument and between rationality and emotionality? Is it possible to account for or depict radical violence without dehumanizing both perpetrators and victims? How do you make readers understand the range and specificity of the atrocities committed and, through this understanding, guide them to react in the right way?

An Atrocity Story: Genre and Structure A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies is a short book of approximately one hundred pages, but as indicated above, it had an enormous influence on the debates in Spain about the justification of the conquest and, in later centuries, on the understanding of the violence of the conquest. As Rolena Adorno has said so compellingly, it was the “tail that wagged the dog” (Adorno 2007, xi). According to Schmidt-Nowara, it is, perhaps, “the most influential work ever written about the conquest of Americas” (Schmidt-Nowara 2006, 132). Brevísima fits within or rather inaugurates a genre that could be called atrocity story.5 In his account, Las Casas describes in gruesome detail the Spanish torture, killing, and enslavement of American Natives from 5  According to the sociologists Bromley, Shupe, and Ventimiglia, who were some of the first to attempt a definition, the pure ‘atrocity story’ must do at least these three things: “a) evoke moral outrage by specifying and detailing the value violations, b) authorize, implicitly or explicitly, punitive sanctions, and c) mobilize control efforts against the alleged perpetrators” (Bromley et al. 1979, 43). Thus, moral outrage and political (or legal) persuasiveness go hand in hand. However, it is remarkable that Bromley et al. do not mention documentation as an integral part of the genre. They even write that it “is of no importance whether the allegations made in atrocity stories are actually true or false” (ibid. 43). I would argue that this can only be formally true. If the spectator believes the atrocity to be totally untrue, he or she may still feel the horror, but the atrocity tale will hardly be able to persuade the spectator to punish or mobilize control effects.

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Mexico to Peru from 1492 until 1542.6 The account is based on a previous and much lengthier report that Las Casas presented in 1542 to the Council of Indies, on request by King Charles V (Adorno 2019, 31). The main part of Brevísima was put into writing in December 1542, but it was not published until 1552 when Las Casas updated and reedited it, adding a short prologue, an epilogue, and an appendix. As argued above, the text needs to be understood in its historical context, which included backsliding from early progressive measures with respect to rights of the Indians or the failure to implement them. When Las Casas edited Brevísima in 1552, he must have had a long list of failures in his mind: His own experiments of creating peaceful colonies in America had collapsed7; the New Laws that were to abolish the encomienda system and the enslavement of Native Americans were not implemented. The king even revoked some of the New Laws (in October 1545 and February 1546) (Hanke 2002, 101). There was no direct outcome of the Valladolid trials; and, after a halt on conquests in 1551, new conquests were taking place again.8 Las Casas writes in his epilogue from 1552 that the stealing and killing continue at the very moment of publication of the book (B.d. Las Casas 1988b, 88). Though Las Casas had not lost faith in the defense of the Indians, he had seen all the difficulties in implementing rights and the defeat of 6  Though the term ‘the Black Legend’ is of a much later date (some say as late as 1912), the legend was created through texts written in the sixteenth century and afterward. Another book that helped create the ‘Black Legend’ was Reginaldus Gonsalvius Montanus’ Sanctae Inquisitionis Hispanicae Artes. (A Discovery and Plaine Declaration of Sundry Subtill Practices of the Holy Inquisition of Spain), a book that describes the cruel procedures of the Inquisition (Rawlings 2005, 4–5). 7  The most successful of these highly unusual experiments took place in the years 1537–1550 in the most inhospitable territory of Guatemala, Tuzútlan, a mountainous area with natives known to be “ferocious, barbarous, and impossible to subjugate” (Hanke 2002, 78). Three times, the Spanish tried to conquer the area but in vain. The Dominicans entered with gifts and songs; and, together with the natives, they built a colony named “Vera Paz” (True Peace). To the great surprise and displeasure of the Spanish colonialists, the experiment seemed to succeed. Even the brutal conqueror Pedro de Alvarado had to praise the work of Las Casas. However, in the end, defiance and revolt among the natives and fierce resistance among the Spanish encomenderos ended the experiment. Many Dominicans were killed, and Las Casas himself had to flee to Nicaragua. He resigned as bishop of Chiapa (in the region of Tuzútlan) in 1550. For a fuller description of this highly interesting experiment, see Lewis Hanke, The Spanish Struggle for Justice in the Conquest of America (Hanke 2002, 78–82). 8  See Chap. 2 for a fuller account of this.

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rational arguments. He probably felt that, in order to persuade the king to change politics in America, a text was needed to present the atrocities in America in a more emphatic form. Brevísima is such a text, emotionally charged and written to make an impact and to change a political situation; or, as Anthony Pagden has described it, it is meant to “press upon the reader the immediacy of the American experience” (Pagden 2004, xxx). Brevísima is a special and very theatrical text within the work of Las Casas. Originally, when he presented his report to the Council of Indies in 1542, he had also presented Entre los remedios in which he gives twenty rational reasons for the abolition of the encomienda system. In the years 1527–1562, Las Casas also continued his work on Historia de las Indias, which provides a fuller account of the discovery, conquest, and colonization of America, including the atrocities that are reported in Brevísima. Comparing the descriptions of atrocities in Historia de las Indias with the description of the same events in Brevísima is highly instructive and makes it clear that Brevísima is written with a markedly different intention than Historia de las Indias—namely, that of impressing the horror of the atrocities directly into the mind of the readers. Like Montesinos’ sermon in 1511, Brevísima is a desperate “cry in the desert.” Brevísima is addressed directly to Philip II, who was at that time twenty-­ five years old and a “king in training.” It was written with the explicit intention of persuading him and his father (Charles V) to change their politics in America. But Las Casas was anxious to reach a broader audience. As Daniel Castro has pointed out, if Las Casas had wanted only to address the Prince or the King, he could have done that much more easily by visiting the court to which he had access or by circulating his treatises, a method he had used previously (Castro 2007, 139). However, he wanted to spread his message as widely as possible. This is also underlined by the fact that this book and eight other treatises (Tratados) that were published in 1552 were all written in Spanish and not Latin, which is the language he used for his more learned texts (Hanke 1965, xii). Las Casas was acutely aware of the necessity of turning public opinion, and he succeeded in publishing some of his treatises, including Brevísima, without the normally required royal permission and without being prosecuted. For the first time, the legitimization of the conquest was discussed publicly. As Lewis

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Hanke notes, the “publication of these treatises demonstrated […] the enormous power of the printing press” (my translation).9 Brevísima has the official form of a relación (meaning an official report) framed as an eyewitness account and presented to the king, describing actual occurrences in America. In the Prologue, Las Casas claims that his report is based on “more than fifty years’ experience of seeing at first hand the evil and the harm, the losses and diminutions suffered by those great kingdoms” (B.d. Las Casas 1992d, 5).10 No less than nineteen times, he stresses that he is a first-hand witness who has seen the events on which he reports “with his own eyes.” In seven cases, he refers to reports by other first-hand witnesses, who are sometimes named (for instance, the Franciscan friar Francisco de San Román (ibid. 32) or the Bishop of Santa Marta (ibid. 81)) and sometimes unnamed but “reliable.” For instance, Las Casas refers to a witness testimony given to the Council of the Indies (ibid. 100). In another case, he has a copy of an eyewitness report (ibid. 120). He makes an effort to report conscientiously from every region of the New World. He includes information on the geography, the name of the region, the local king and the people, and how the atrocities were committed in that particular region, which adds credibility to his ‘documentation.’ Las Casas seems to present the atrocities without interpretation, almost as if they could ‘speak for themselves.’ The tone of facticity is extremely important. It provides a sense of reliability. However, the book is not a historical account of the facts but an argumentative presentation of evidence. The genre of relación is judicial per se (Pagden 2004, xxxi). 9  “La publicación de estos tratados demostró […] el poder tremendo de la prensa” (Hanke 1965, xiii). Contrary to many of his opponents, Las Casas was a conscious and successful publication strategist. While he published his criticism of the Spanish conquest almost without restrictions all of his life, including some works without royal acceptance or acceptance by the Council of the Indies, he had enough influence at the court to prevent the publication of works by his enemies, including works by Ginés de Sepúlveda and Gonzálo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés, the abovementioned anthropologist, historian, and colonialist who published the first version of his Historia general y natural de las Indias in 1526—a book that, according to Las Casas, contained only “sheer fables and shameless nonsense” (B.d. Las Casas 1974, 25). Oviedo’s second version of this book was censored in Spain, and publication only happened in 1749. 10  “Considerando, pues, yo (Muy Poderoso Señor) los males e daños, perdición e jacturas […] de aquellos tantos y tan grandes e tales reinos, y, por mejor decir, de aquel vastísimo e nuevo mundo […] como hombre que por cincuenta años y más de experiencia, siendo en aquellas tierras presente, los he visto cometer” (B.d. Las Casas 1988b, 32).

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Though Consuelo Varela is right when she says that the facts of the atrocities take up more space than the discussion of rights (“fundada en los hechos más que en los derechos” (Varela 1999, 34)), the facts only make sense when seen in relation to the rights-based argument that frames their presentation. Las Casas’ claim in Brevísima is that the Spanish conquest has taken an illicit path, that the conquerors are only driven by greed, and that they brutally torture and kill men, women, and children in every town or village they set foot in. If one reads the book quickly, it may seem like a nauseating, repetitive list of crimes. Everywhere, the Spanish conquest follows the same pattern: The Indians, who lived peacefully in kingdoms and in harmony with nature before the arrival of the Spanish, receive the Spanish in friendly and hospitable ways and give the Spanish all they ask for, including food and gold. However, the Spanish reward this kindness by plundering and burning entire villages and towns, with brutal torture and massacres of the local population, and by the enslavement of the survivors. This happens again and again without exception. Nowhere are the conquerors good men, and nowhere are the Indians aggressive or even unfriendly, except after violent provocations by the Spanish. The report is semi-chronological but is for the most part structured around regions, starting with atrocities in the Caribbean area, moving then to Nicaragua, New Spain, Guatemala, Yucatán, and other kingdoms in Central America (some of the massacres in the Caribbean area and in Central America were witnessed by Las Casas). Then, the report moves to South America, especially Santa Marta (Columbia), Peru, and Venezuela (here, Las Casas had to rely on other witnesses). It may seem a rather ‘random’ sequential structure. However, as Rolena Adorno has noted, if one looks closer, Brevísima is structured as a rhetorical argument, consisting of exordio (capturing interest), narration (telling the events/laying out the evidence), and peroration (moving the listener to action) (Adorno 2019, 34). Las Casas captures the interest of the reader in the epic beginning by pointing out the marvelous nature of America and the “quite incredible” and “extraordinary” story of the conquest. He says that the conquest overshadows “all the deeds of famous men of the past, no matter how heroic” and then, by contrast, he immediately moves on to the “massacres of innocent peoples,” “atrocities,” and “horrific excesses” (B.d. Las Casas 1992d, 3–4). The contradictory image of a marvelous and horrific conquest functions as a ‘riddle’ that needs to be solved. How can this

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conquest be both marvelous and horrific? Are the conquerors heroes or perpetrators? The reader is soon to find out. In the end, there is an appeal to the reader: “Recognition of the truth will make the reader more compassionate towards the sufferings and the predicament of these poor innocent peoples and oblige him to adopt an attitude even more stern and censorious towards the abominable greed, ambition, and brutality of their Spanish oppressors” (B.d. Las Casas 1992d, 126).11 The reader’s reaction must be recognition of moral truth, acknowledgment of the suffering of the victims, and condemnation of the perpetrators. As mentioned previously, Brevísima is also written with the explicit aim of convincing Philip II and his father that they need to change policies in America. In several passages, Las Casas stresses that a good king must react to calamities that occur in his kingdom.

An Allegorical Drama of Violence: Perpetrators and Victims, Text Versus Image Brevísima is accusatory and performative rather than descriptive. Even the factual repetition of crimes is performative in the sense that it is supposed to affect the reader in a specific way. The repetition is incorporated not only into the macrostructure of the book but also into individual scenes in which Las Casas seems to stand back and report pure facts. For instance, in the section on Hispaniola, he repeats the grammatical structure six times, starting each sentence with the word “they”: “They forced their way into native settlements… They hacked them to pieces…, They even laid wagers on…..They grabbed suckling infants…..They slaughtered anyone….., They spared no one….” (B.d. Las Casas 1992d, 15).12 The repetition serves to underline the physical and unstoppable character of the violence. The audience is meant to feel the rhythm, the almost automatic character of the acts, and the abhorrent physical pain. In his very explicit descriptions, he accumulates violent acts, scene after scene ad 11  “Y, para que más compasión cualquiera cristiano haya de aquellas inocentes naciones, y de su perdición y condenación más se duela, y más culpe y abomine y deteste la cudicia y ambición y crueldad de los españoles, tengan todos por verdadera esta verdad, con las que arriba he afirmado […]” (B.d. Las Casas 1988b, 86). 12  In the Spanish version, the pronoun is implicit. There are seven repetitions: “Entraban en los pueblos… Hacían pedazos… Hacían apuestas… Tomaban las criaturas… daban de cabeza con ellas… daban con ellas… metían a espada…. (my emphasis) (B.d. Las Casas 1988b, 36–37).

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nauseum, in a way that makes the reader a spectator in an anatomical theater of violence. He stresses that he has to do it: “it would constitute a criminal neglect of my duty to remain silent” (B.d. Las Casas 1992d, 6).13 However, he repeatedly states that it is impossible to narrate them due to their enormity and numbers (“Oh, would that I could describe one hundredth part […]” (B.d. Las Casas 1992d, 84)).14 Maybe because of the difficulty of telling about the horrors, it often seems as if he lets the bodies speak for themselves, just as the conquerors meant their violence to be a warning to other Indians. One example of this is when Las Casas explains how 200 Indians in Florida were mutilated by the Spanish conquerors: They had their “noses, lips and chins sliced from their faces; they were then sent away, in unspeakable agony and all running with blood, to act as walking testimony to the great deeds and holy miracles performed by these dauntless missionaries of the Holy Catholic Faith” (B.d. Las Casas 1992d, 104).15 Several times, Las Casas reports on how the conquerors cut the wrists of survivors to “send a message” to other Indians. The physical wounds and the running blood in all their material horror are themselves testimony with a performative effect. Immediately after this particular report, Las Casas writes: “The reader may judge for himself…” (B.d. Las Casas 1992d, 104) (“Júzguese agora…” (B.d. Las Casas 1988b, 76)). Presenting scenes of torture with a strong physical visuality underlines his forensic aim, but it also creates a theatrical effect. As Erika Fischer-­ Lichte has highlighted, especially in the Baroque period, it was an inherent part of theatricality to ‘let the bodies speak,’ thereby creating a strong emotionality (Fischer-Lichte and Riley 1997, 29). However, since Las Casas’ aim is not only to denounce the actual crimes but also to present a case against the legitimacy of the conquest, he incorporates the violent incidents into an allegorical moral structure. The demonstration of violence combined with moral/legal accusations make this atrocity story into a forceful and persuasive text. 13  “[…] deliberé, por no ser reo, callando, de las perdiciones de ánimas e cuerpos infinitas, que los tales perpetraran […]” (B.d. Las Casas 1988b, 32). 14  “¡Oh, quién pudiese dar a entender, de cient partes, una, […]!” (B.d. Las Casas 1988b, 66). 15  “[…] hizo cortar el tirano mayor desde las narices con los labrios [sic] hasta la barba de todas las caras, dejándolas rasas. Y así, con aquella lástima y dolor e amargura, corriendo sangre, los enviaron a que llevasen las nuevas de las obras y milagros que hacían aquellos predicadores de la sancta fe católica baptizados” (B.d. Las Casas 1988b, 76).

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Throughout the book, the drama is dominated by a strong perpetrator-­ victim dichotomy, framed allegorically as a clash between good and evil. At the very beginning, drawing on biblical images, Las Casas sets the stage for an allegorical drama: […] yo he oído decir a muchos seglares españoles, de muchos años acá y muchas veces, no pudiendo negar la bondad que en ellos ven: ‘cierto, estas gentes eran las más bienaventuradas del mundo, si solamente conoscieran a Dios.’/En estas ovejas mansas, y de las calidades susodichas por su Hacedor y Criador así dotadas, entraron los españoles, desde luego que las conocieron, como lobos e tigres y leones crudelísimos de muchos días hambrientos. (B.d. Las Casas 1988b, 34) […] over the years I have time and again met Spanish laymen who have been so struck by the natural goodness that shines through these people that they frequently can be heard to exclaim: ‘These would be the most blessed people on earth if only they were given the chance to convert to Christianity’./ It was upon these gentle lambs, imbued by the Creator with all the qualities we have mentioned, that from the very first day they clapped eyes on them the Spanish fell like ravening wolves upon the fold or like tigers and savage lions that have not eaten meat for days. (B.d. Las Casas 1992d, 11)

The brutal conquest is thus inscribed into a religious allegory of good (Native Americans) versus evil (Spanish conquerors). This Manichean framing adds melodramatic tension to the violence. It is an affective dramatization of opposites that underlines Spanish guilt. However, the question is, what effect such a dichotomy has on the readers’ understanding of the victims? Does it create voyeuristic images of violence? Does it undermine the agency of the Native Americans? Is it ethically problematic? My analytical point here is that the effect of a perpetrator-­ victim dichotomy, often salient in atrocity stories, varies depending on the specific aesthetic framing and the context of the representation. This becomes clear if one compares Las Casas’ representation with other representations. When Brevísima was published in France in a Latin version in 1598, it was illustrated by the famous Protestant Flemish artist, Théodore de Bry (1528–1598). De Bry was inspired by a previous translation into French done by Jacques de Maggrode in 1557 in Antwerp, which was illustrated by an anonymous artist. However, as Tom Conley has rightly asserted, it is the work by Théodore de Bry that “appears to serve as paradigm of

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everything that follows” (Conley 1992, 107). It is therefore worth having a closer look at the specific depiction of the atrocities in De Bry’s images. One of the first engravings by Théodore de Bry in the 1598 edition of Las Casas’ book is shown in Fig. 3.1. The illustration is based on the following two passages in Las Casas’ work that describe the brutality of the first conquests of Hispaniola: Hacían unas horcas largas, que juntasen casi los pies a la tierra, e de trece en trece, a honor y reverencia de Nuestro Redemptor e de los doce Apóstoles, poniéndoles leña e fuego, los quemaban vivos. (B.d. Las Casas 1988b, 37)

Fig. 3.1  Illustration by Théodore de Bry, published in France in 1598 in a Latin version of Las Casas’ Brevísima relación de la destruición de las Indias (B.d. Las Casas 1992d, 31). Orig. title Narratio regionum Indicarum per Hispanos quosdam devastattarum. Public Domain

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They spared no one, erecting especially wide gibbets on which they could string their victims up with their feet just off the ground and then burn them alive thirteen at a time, in honour of our Saviour and the twelve Apostles, or tie dry straw to their bodies and set fire to it. (B.d. Las Casas 1992d, 15)

And: Tomaban las criaturas de las tetas de las madres, por las piernas, e daban de cabeza con ellas en las peñas. (B.d. Las Casas 1988b, 36) […] they grabbed suckling infants by the feet and, ripping them from their mothers’ breasts, dashed them headlong against the rocks. (B.d. Las Casas 1992d, 15)

Despite the realistic precision and technical detail of these and many other descriptions in the book, they are all encompassed within an allegorical register. In the example above, the devilish character of the Spanish conquerors is underlined. Not only are they brutal, they mock Christianity by choosing to burn thirteen at a time, which is a blasphemous mockery that cannot help but shed an ironic light on the Christian mission through which the conquest was legitimized. The allegorical truth of the scene reverses the mission completely. It turns the American victims into Jesus and the twelve apostles and the Spanish conquerors into bloodthirsty devils. Théodore de Bry, who had recently converted to Protestantism and wanted to stress the cruelty of the Spanish conquerors (Conley 1992, 104) makes a vivid and dramatic illustration of the two scenes, but he paradoxically overdoes the effect in a way that almost repeats the crime.16 Despite the fact that De Bry follows Las Casas quite closely and creates an almost literal illustration of the antithetic mode inherent in Las Casas’ depiction of innocent victims versus evil perpetrators, there are also some clear differences that change the meaning. De Bry depersonalizes the victims and exaggerates their bodily helplessness while presenting the Spanish 16  Rolena Adorno has stressed the fact that neither Jacques Miggrode nor Théodore de Bry personally had the intention of “defaming the Spanish nation” as such (Adorno 2019, 44). They did not want to depict all Spanish people as cruel and bloodthirsty people. But, clearly, the images are meant to shock and raise criticism of the Spanish conquest. Miggrode also stresses in his prologue that the book should “serve as an example and warning to the seventeen provinces of the Low Countries” (Adorno 2019, 42). So, the denunciation of Spanish crimes in America also served to remind the European reader of the Spanish oppression of people in the Netherlands.

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torturers as strong, dignified, and personalized human beings. This representation invites the voyeurism of the spectator in a way that Las Casas never does, and its depiction of inequality takes away any potential indigenous agency and functions almost as an unintended mockery of the victims. In the image, the victimhood of the Indians is emphasized by their helpless, fragile nudity. The nudity of the woman hanging second to the right—presumably, the mother of the child who is about to be killed at the left—is especially accentuated. In contrast to the men, her sex is not covered. As Tom Conley has noted, the image of the naked woman has an almost pornographic character that adds to the voyeuristic character of the image (Conley 1992, 109). By accentuating her nudity, the affective impact of the image increases.17 The genitals of the Indian men are covered by small pieces of cloth, but this hopeless protection—in combination with the fact that their bodies are small and fragile, hanging helplessly from the gallows—only emphasizes their humiliation. The elegance of the Spanish torturers’ clothes signals a distinction in social class; their larger body size and their physical, muscular strength emphasize their agency. Their exaggerated movements seem to suggest that they are more than eager to torture. Their feet only touch the ground lightly as though they were performing a macabre ballet of death. At the left, a man is slaying a baby against a stylized “Indian” hut/house. The sketchy character of the hut is quite common in images from the period, but the hut may also be seen as an immense tombstone onto which the dark shadow of the murderer is cast. In order to underline the scale of the slaughter, you can see multiple killings taking place in the back. In the image above and the other seventeen engravings in the book, the torturers are ‘caught in the act’ and fully exposed to the moral indignation of the spectator.18 Any spectator would be horrified. As mentioned above, in the centuries to come, the images came to function as ‘memory freeze-­ frames,’ a word used by Susan Sontag to describe how single images of horror provide “a quick way of apprehending something and a compact form of memorizing it” (Sontag 2003, 19). The images are archetypical in 17  This analytical point should not be overemphasized. Of the eighteen engravings made by Théodore de Bry, only four highlight the suffering of women and children. This also has to do with the fact that Las Casas depicts the extermination of Native American kingdoms. Therefore, he describes the killing of the kings or governors especially. 18  Only one engraving does not show a scene of torture or killing: this is the scene in which the Spanish meet Montezuma, the powerful king of Mexico.

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the way they combine documentary details of the violence and appeal to moral indignation. They seem to be based on the idea (repeated by Susan Sontag as a general trait in atrocity tales about war) that, if “the horror could be made vivid enough, most people would finally take in the outrageousness, the insanity of war” (Sontag 2003, 12). Horror in itself is supposed to be persuasive. Yet, the paradox is that the illustration elicits more than an abhorrence of the Spanish torturers and sympathy with the suffering victims. As noted by Tom Conley above, and as James Dawes (drawing on Freud and Adorno) has pointed out, the exposure of the victim’s pain may add insult to injury and create an appeal not only to the moral indignation of the audience but also to their voyeuristic pleasure (Dawes 2007, 8–9). In fact, there are several characteristics in the image that invite ‘identification’ with the Spanish torturers rather than with the victims—not least their elegance and self-assurance. In De Bry’s images, the Indians are almost anonymous; their faces are blurred; some of the faces seem to be grotesque masks that represent stereotypical visions of either extreme suffering or death. In contrast, the Spanish man whose face may be seen has individual, recognizable features. Anonymizing the victims and presenting the perpetrators in a more recognizable form (sometimes, with name and title) is very often seen in atrocity tales, owing to their inherently dual moral and accusatory character.19 In a certain sense, you do not have to describe the victims’ individual characters, for it is outrageous that any human being should suffer as the Indians in De Bry’s images suffer. What is exposed here is what Judith Butler has called a “primary vulnerability” (Butler 2006, 32). Once you see and feel this vulnerability, you will understand that the perpetrator must be stopped and punished. Therefore, this strategy seems to be in line with the moral, political, and performative aims of the atrocity tale. However, the depiction of the Indians as helpless, dehumanized victims also constitutes an ethical problem. The risk is that their agency and autonomy are undermined. How is it possible to show such an agency while vividly depicting the destruction to which they were exposed? One

19  Sharon Sliwinski points this out in her reading of atrocity tales from the Congo Reform Movement: “The maimed children’s stories were obsessively repeated at hundreds of meetings, although usually without proper names” (Sliwinski 2011, 79). She is critical of this tendency since it dehumanizes the victims.

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answer to this question may be found in Las Casas’ depiction of the victims. Whereas the murderer is recognizable and the victim is anonymous in De Bry’s illustrations, it is the other way around in Las Casas’ writing: the perpetrator is anonymized, and the victims, especially local governors, are given names. The naming of local governors or kings is interesting because it underlines and rhetorically restores the political position of the Indians. It is significant that nowhere is this political position related to their cultural identity. Even when anecdotes are told about the deaths of local kings and they are attributed with especially honorable traits, these anecdotes serve to illuminate the uneven military situation rather than any substantial cultural identity. For instance, there is the anecdote about Hatuey from Cuba, who, tied to the stake, was asked to convert to Christianity in order to be saved and go to heaven instead of Hell. On hearing that Heaven was full of Christians, he said he preferred Hell (B.d. Las Casas 1992d, 28). This anecdote illustrates Hatuey’s will to resistance and non-assimilation, not his indigenous culture. The information provided in the book on local communities is political in the sense that it is information about politically divided kingdoms and communities and their legitimate governors. But why does Las Casas omit the names of the conquerors? Does he not thereby fail to accuse the perpetrators? In the first version of Brevísima, written in 1542 but not published, the names of the conquerors were not omitted. Daniel Castro has hinted that Las Casas censored the names of the perpetrators in the 1552 edition “to avoid carrying the confrontation to its furthest possible consequences” (Castro 2007, 109). This reading is backed up by the fact that Las Casas forbade the publication of his Historia de las Indias (in which the names are given) for at least forty years after 1559 (Castro 2007, 109). It seems as if Las Casas wanted to protect the perpetrators against persecution or to avoid conflict with them and their families. Though one could argue that he did not have to mention the names of the conquerors since which conqueror was responsible for which conquest was common knowledge, there might be some truth to Castro’s suspicion. However, Las Casas’ choice may also be understood in another way. It can be seen as a strategy both to narrow down and to generalize the responsibility. As mentioned above, Brevísima is primarily and explicitly addressed to the king, and it was only the king who had the political power to stop the atrocities. Accusing specific colonialists and conquerors might

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have shifted the focus from the royal responsibility. More importantly, Las Casas also wants to generalize guilt. Very often, the Spanish are just called ‘the Spaniards’ or ‘the Europeans’—or, more bitterly, ‘the Christians,’ meaning that they all or each of them is responsible for these acts in the conquest. This generalization fits with the allegorical style of the account. Las Casas wants to stress the general moral problem, and the atrocity story also serves as a warning to those who support the violence. Whereas many historical reports and literary works of the period provided heroic portraits of specific conquerors who subjugated vast lands inhabited by unknown, ‘savage’ Indians, Las Casas turns it around: The conquerors in Brevísima are ‘unknown,’ unheroic perpetrators, but the victims are known, and the crimes are to a certain extent seen through their eyes. In the chapter on Hispaniola, we hear about the four kings and one queen who rule the five provinces: the “dutiful and virtuous” Guarionex of Cibao in Maguá (who had powerful vassals and wanted to develop farming), King Guacanagarí (the king of Marién, who had many vassals, several of whom were known to Las Casas and died in flight), King Caonabó (the king of Maguana, who outdid the others in “strength, majestic bearing and court ceremonial” (B.d. Las Casas 1992d, 21) and was captured and imprisoned on a ship that sank on its way to Spain), King Behechio (the king of Xaraguá, who had a refined language and was killed) and his sister Anacaona (who ruled after him and was also killed—she was hanged, which was a way of showing her respect), and finally Queen Higuanama (the queen of Higuey, who was also hanged). From the opening of Brevísima, it is clear that these Indians are not savages but inhabitants of organized political communities. The most important effect of the dual strategy of anonymization (of the Spanish) and familiarization (of the Indians) is often overlooked. By using this strategy, Las Casas places his morally founded atrocity tale within a framework of international politics. The fact that the Native Americans have kings or “caciques” is proof that they have a sovereign political order. Therefore, the Indians have a right to property and self-­ defense. This is the radical difference between the framing of the atrocities in De Bry’s images and Las Casas’ text. If one compares the descriptions of the atrocities in Brevísima with the descriptions of the same atrocities in Historia de las Indias, it becomes quite clear that the two texts were written with different purposes. Much of the nuance, historical context, and local resistance that Daniel Castro misses in Brevísima, he finds in Historia de las Indias. For instance, the

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previously mentioned event in which the Spaniards hang thirteen Indians and light a fire beneath their feet is described in a more contextualized way in Historia de las Indias (vol. II). This episode occurs after a passage where Las Casas describes the indigenous people’s ability to fight back. The Indians sometimes succeed in killing particularly cruel Spaniards such as Martín de Villamán and eight of his men (B.d. Las Casas 1994b, 1356–57), and they have the advantage of outnumbering the Spanish. He narrates how, once, a cuadrilla of 13 Spaniards was confronted by a group of 1000 Indians, who threw stones and shot arrows in the direction of the Spaniards. It is also told how the Spanish constantly suffer from hunger since they never travel with food. In Historia de las Indias, the Spanish leaders are mentioned by name. Just as in Brevísima, they are described as cruel, and they are in no circumstance justified in their behavior. However, the reader gets a better sense of the warlike situations that are the background of some of the killings and the desperate situation in which the Spanish conquerors find themselves. In Brevísima, much of the context is omitted in order to clarify the drama of violence and to allow the allegorical structure of good versus evil to stand out in a theatrically convincing way.

The Nature of Natural Rights: Divine, Physical, or Rational? It is essential for the forensic claim of Las Casas’ Brevísima and his defense of the Indians that it is based on natural rights that cannot be abridged. However, one may ask: What kind of natural right is at play in this heterogenous text? In his introduction to De Regia Potestate, Antonio Enrique Pérez Luño very helpfully distinguishes between three different understandings of nature underlying Las Casas’ natural rights thinking: (1) nature as divine creation that relates nature to the will of God, (2) nature as cosmos or the physical world, which allows for natural instincts and needs, and (3) nature as reason, reason being a universal attribute of human beings that permit them to “autonomously establish the basic norms of social life” (“[…] que le permite establecer autónomamente sus normas básicas de convivencia” (Luño 1990, iv; my translation)). According to Pérez Luño, the interest in divine voluntarism is strongest in the early period of Las Casas’ thinking, while his last works are dominated by a Thomistic investigation of rationality (Luño 1990, v–xiv), but the three understandings of “nature” are often present at the same time.

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The distinctions among them seem essential because they constitute the foundation of rights in three different ways. One may ask: Do the Indians have rights because they are human beings created by God and in his image, because they are innocent, natural people who live in accordance with the law of nature, or because they are rational beings, capable of a social and moral life, citizens who own their land and have a political structure? Do the different understandings of nature align and supplement each other, or is there a contradiction between them? All three understandings are at play in Brevísima. Las Casas sees them as intimately connected. Again and again, he mentions the three levels of natural rights and law together when he speaks about “natural, canon and civil law” in one phrase as if they were the same thing (B.d. Las Casas 1992d, 6) (“ley natural, divina y humana” (B.d. Las Casas 1988b, 32)). At some points, he proclaims that “[a]ny reasonable person who knows anything of God, of rights and of civil law can imagine…” or that the Indians enjoy rights “under the natural, divine, and Roman law” (B.d. Las Casas 1992d, 70).20 However, if you look closer, it becomes clear that the different understandings of nature and natural rights serve different, sometimes mutually supportive, and sometimes contradictory rhetorical purposes. The divine level serves to curtail the power of the king and the pope and remind them of their moral responsibility; the natural/physical level serves to highlight the lack of decadence in the Native Americans and their superior morality; the rational level serves to depict the American natives as civilized beings who live in politically ordered kingdoms. Already in the prologue, Las Casas complains that the Spanish conquerors have dispossessed the “natural masters” of their land (B.d. Las Casas 1992d, 7) (“despoblar de sus naturales moradores y poseedores […] aquellas tierras grandísimas […]” (B.d. Las Casas 1988b, 33)). The Indians are “natural masters” by divine law. The very fact that the world is divided into kingdoms is a direct effect of divine law, a law that is above both the Spanish king and the Pope. Several times, Las Casas uses the level of divine law to curtail the power of the king and the Pope and to remind them of the “innate and natural virtue” with which a ruler within the divine order must be possessed (B.d. Las Casas 1992d, 5) (“la innata y 20  “Y los tristes ciegos, dejados de Dios venir a reprobado sentido, no viendo la justísima causa, y causas muchas llenas de toda justicia, que los indios tienen por ley natural, divina y humana […]” (B.d. Las Casas 1988b, 59).

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natural virtud del rey” (B.d. Las Casas 1988b, 32)). In the prologue of Brevísima, divine law is called upon not so much as an essential and theological principle but as part of Las Casas’ rhetorical strategy to convince the king that he has to act. Pointing out the divine origin of the moral obligation gives his demands authority, and the failure to act will accordingly be a mortal sin. What Las Casas wants of the king is not only to stop the bloodshed but also to restore the ban on encomiendas, stated in Article 35 of the New Laws of 1542 but withdrawn in October 1545 through the Cédula of Malines and Royal Order of April 1546 at Ratisbon (Hanke 2002, 101). In Entre los remedios, which was read and conveyed to the king along with Brevísima in 1542, Las Casas delivers a harsh attack on the encomienda system. In the text, he gives twenty reasons the Indians cannot be subjected to the Spaniards, whatever the circumstances: not within the encomienda system or any other feudal system, not as vassals or any other way. The ninth reason is that, as Queen Isabella I had already stated, the Indians are free and no one, not even the king, may take that freedom away from them (B.d. Las Casas 1992b, 326).21 Las Casas argues that, as had been stipulated, the Indians do not work voluntarily for the Spanish encomenderos. They are, properly speaking, slaves, and this is illegal. He argues for the immediate liberation of all Indians (B.d. Las Casas 1992b, 253) and underlines again that the king is obligated by divine law to do so (“Su Magestad es obligado de precepto divino a mandar poner en libertad todos los indios, que los españoles tienen por esclavos” (B.d. Las Casas 1992b, 254) (my emphasis)). In the prologue to Brevísima, when Las Casas refers to the encomenderos’ fight to “obtain further licence [sic] to continue their conquests” (B.d. Las Casas 1992d, 7),22 he adds in a parenthesis that that license cannot be granted “without infringing natural and divine law and thereby conniving at the gravest of mortal sins, worthy of the most terrible and everlasting punishment” (B.d. Las Casas 1992d, 7).23 This is a warning to the king that his decision will be of importance for his own salvation. It is as if Las 21  “[…] veinte razones, por las cuales prueba no deberse dar los indios a los españoles en encomienda ni en feudo ni en vassalaje ni de otra manera alguna” (B.d. Las Casas 1992b, 643). 22  “[…] importunando por diversas vías e varios fingidos colores, que se les concedan, o permitan las dichas conquistas […]” (B.d. Las Casas 1988b, 33). 23  (“[…] las cuales no se les podrían conceder sin violación de la ley natural e divina, e, por consiguiente, gravísimos pecados mortales, dignos de terribles y eternos suplicios)” (B.d. Las Casas 1988b, 33).

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Casas is claiming divine authority for himself, saying almost: “do as I say or you’ll go to Hell!” Rhetorically speaking, Brevísima is a strong argument against the king’s former decision to withdraw the ban on the encomiendas. The second form of nature listed by Pérez Luño is nature as cosmos or physical world, which allows for natural instincts and needs. Like Columbus, Las Casas was fascinated with the Native Americans in the Caribbean islands, who seemed to live in harmony with nature, innocently walked around naked, and were “unassuming,” “without malice or guile” (B.d. Las Casas 1992d, 9) like “gentle lambs” (B.d. Las Casas 1992d, 11) (“simples, sin maldades, ni dobleces”; “ovejas mansas” (B.d. Las Casas 1988b, 34)). When Las Casas repeatedly argues that the Native Americans are better than the Spaniards, it is because they live closer to the original, Edenic state of nature. They are ‘noble savages.’ It is no coincidence that Las Casas has been called a “Rousseau avant la lettre” (Luño 1990, ix).24 While Ginés de Sepúlveda accused the natives of being simpleminded, morally underdeveloped, cannibalistic, and beastlike because they lived in a primitive culture, Las Casas reverses the picture. In fact, it is the Spaniards who, because of their advanced culture, are beastlike (“like raving lions and tigers” (B.d. Las Casas 1992d, 121))25and morally underdeveloped. Las Casas even accuses the conqueror Pedro Alvarado of allowing and even encouraging cannibalism since he did not feed his army (B.d. Las Casas 1992d, 62). At the beginning of Brevísima, Las Casas says that the Spanish commanders and soldiers involved in the torture and killing of the Indians had been “anaesthetized to human suffering by their own greed and ambition, that they had ceased to be men in any meaningful sense of the term […]” (B.d. Las Casas 1992d, 3).26 It is an explicit dehumanization of the Spanish conquerors. The depiction of Native Americans as innocent people who live in harmony with nature has been criticized for being “naif” (no one is as innocent as Las Casas’ gentle Indians) (Alves and Moreira 2013, 100), for being erroneous (since many Native Americans lived in cities), or, worse, for being a paternalistic insult that likens the indigenous people to 24  Pérez Luño refers to J.A. Maravall, who makes this point in Utopía y reformismo en la España de los Austrias (1982). 25  “Dan los tigres y leones en las ovejas mansas […]” (B.d. Las Casas 1988b, 83) 26  “[…] viendo algunos años después muchos insensibles hombres, que la cobdicia y ambición ha hecho degenerar del ser hombres, y sus facinerosas obras traído en reprobado sentido, […]” (B.d. Las Casas 1988b, 31)

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children (Castro 2007, 180–81). Margaret R. Greer, Walter D. Mignolo, and Maureen Quilligan write that Las Casas (in his Tratado Segundo/ Apología (Defense of the Indians)) describes the natives as barbarians, defined by barbarie negative (negative barbarism), a designation that describes “all those who ‘lack’ some key civilizing element” (Greer et al. 2007, 7). According to the authors, Las Casas has in mind all “non-Latin empires” and especially those that lack “literal locution,” which means “a lack of ‘Latinity’” (Greer et al. 2007, 7). The stipulation here is that Las Casas’ claim that Native Americans lived in harmony and close to nature risks doing the opposite of what Las Casas intended: taking away their status as developed, rational beings and their status as political citizens. However, if one takes a closer look at Las Casas’ definition of barbarians as quoted in Apología, it becomes obvious that the definitions, referenced by Greer, Mignolo, and Quilligan, are based on relative terms. It is true that Las Casas defines “those who do not have a written language” as barbarians (B.d. Las Casas 1992c, 30) (“aquellos que carecen de idioma escrito” (B.d. Las Casas 1988a, 87)), but he goes on to qualify that understanding by saying that these people are not barbarians “in the absolute” (“en sentido absoluto”) but “by circumstance” (“accidentalmente”). Then, he explains that not knowing a written language is like not knowing a foreign language: “In this sense he is called a barbarian who, because of the difference of his language, does not understand another speaking to him. Thus Paul, speaking of himself, says: ‘If I am ignorant of what the sound means, I am a barbarian to the man who is speaking and he is a barbarian to me.’”27 As Las Casas says, “the Greeks called the Romans barbarians, and, in turn, the Romans called the Greeks and other nations of the world barbarians” (B.d. Las Casas 1992c, 31).28 “Barbarian” is a relative and transferable term. In his Apología, Las Casas stresses that there are very few barbarians in the strict sense of the word, meaning people who are “cruel, savage, sottish, stupid, and strangers to reason.” Quoting Aristotle, he says that would be against natural law: “Nature always follows the best course 27  “En este sentido es llamado bárbaro aquél que, por la diferencia del idioma, no entiende a otro que le habla. Así San Pablo, hablando de sí mismo, dice: ‘Si desconozco el valor de las palabras, seré bárbaro para aquél a quien hablo y quien me habla será bárbaro’” (B.d. Las Casas 1988a, 87). 28  “Así, en los tiempos antiguos, los griegos llamaban bárbaros a los romanos, y, a su vez, los romanos llamaban bárbaros tanto a los griegos como a los demás pueblos del mundo” (B.d. Las Casas 1988a, 87).

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possible” (B.d. Las Casas 1992c, 34).29 In addition, it would be against divine law if a whole people were savage. The very fact that the Indians are “countless” means that they cannot be savage. That would be inconsistent with natural law (B.d. Las Casas 1992c, 35): “It is in accord with divine providence and goodness that nature should always or for the most part produce the best and the perfect […]” (B.d. Las Casas 1992c, 34).30 So, there is no reason to assume that Las Casas saw the Indians as savage barbarians just because they could not write and did not know Latin. On the contrary, the fact that they live close to nature, naked and innocently, becomes the source of moral superiority. Though idealized and utopian, this kind of ecological moral thinking had a critical function; and, as Pérez Luño argues, Las Casas is a forerunner in this way of ecological thinking today (Luño 1990, viii). The third point in Pérez Luño’s list is nature as reason, reason being a universal attribute of human beings that permits them to “autonomously establish the basic norms of social life” (op cit) and, as I have argued above, to establish politically ordered kingdoms that may claim sovereignty. While the first two points ‘only’ secure the position of the Indians as “human beings” or “men,” this last point turns them into citizens of sovereign kingdoms. Therefore, this is essential and very salient in Brevísima. Since it has been debated what kind of sovereignty the Indians actually possess based upon their natural rights, it is worth giving it a bit of attention. Daniel Castro claims that Brevísima aptly demonstrates how Las Casas was not a forerunner of human rights but a forerunner of the “modern dependency school that views Indoamericans as helpless beings unable to break free from their servitude” (Castro 2007, 113). He argues: […] the tract’s perpetrator-victim dichotomy objectified the Indians, robbing them of volition and casting them as helpless victims without the capacity for self-defense, much less self-determination. Despite Las Casas’ claims of having had firsthand experience with the natives of Santo Domingo, Cuba, and Central America, he fails to represent the Indians as the equals of the Europeans and thus capable of social organization, adaptation, or rebellion. (Castro 2007, 113)  “La naturaleza hace entre las cosas posibles la mejor” (B.d. Las Casas 1988a, 91).  “Por esto motivo, conviene a la divina providencia y bondad que la naturaleza siempre y en la mayor parte de los casos produzca las cosas mejores y perfectas […]” (B.d. Las Casas 1988a, 93). 29 30

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Anthony Pagden claims that Las Casas “[…] would never have accepted any kind of revolt against the power of either the Church or the State” (Pagden 2004, xiv), and he continues: “Las Casas never once denied that the Spanish Crown was the legitimate ruler of the Americas, and he persisted until his death in the belief that the indigenous peoples had, in ignorance but in good faith, voluntarily surrendered their natural sovereignty to the King of Spain” (Pagden 2004, xv–xvi). In the following, I shall try to demonstrate that this is not true. My claim is that Las Casas’ whole argument builds on the Indians’ right to fight against the Spanish. Because the division into kingdoms is of a divine order, the Indian kingdoms have to be respected as legal and just entities. Las Casas makes an effort to stress that the American kingdoms are on an equal footing with any other kingdom in Europe or Africa. All the kingdoms have legitimate rulers and political sovereignty; consequently, the principle of just war is applicable in America. Since the Indians have not waged war on Spain, the war of the Spanish conquerors in America is unjust. Just as Francisco de Vitoria had done in his De Indis (1532), Las Casas argues that the Indians have true dominion.31 Even if they are sinners, they have true dominion. Therefore, when the Indians kill Spanish people, they are “in all justice fully entitled to” (B.d. Las Casas 1992d, 17). He says emphatically about the Indians’ right to wage war: Y sé por cierta e infallible sciencia que los indios tuvieron siempre justísima guerra contra los cristianos, e los cristianos una ni ninguna nunca tuvieron justa contra los indios. (B.d. Las Casas 1988b, 40) I know beyond any shadow of doubt that they had, from the very beginning, every right to wage war on the Europeans, while the Europeans never had just cause for waging war on the local peoples. (B.d. Las Casas 1992d, 23)

About the battle of Mexico, Las Casas writes that once the local people learned about the “barbaric and unprecedented outrage, perpetrated 31  Daniel Brunstetter argues that Las Casas’ understanding of just war differs from Vitoria’s and that of other Salamanca scholars, claiming that it is mainly based on Gratian (Brunstetter 2018, 218). However, Vitoria and Las Casas agree that the Indians have true dominion over their land, and the fact that they are pagan sinners does not take away their right to the land. Vitoria writes: “[…] I advance the proposition that mortal sin does not hinder civil dominion and true dominion” (Vitoria 1532, First Section, Sixth Proposition).

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against innocent individuals who had done nothing whatever to deserve such cruelty, the whole city […] took up arms and attacked them. Many Spaniards were wounded and narrowly managed to make good their escape” (B.d. Las Casas 1992d, 51).32 The local people of Mexico later “attacked with such unrelenting ferocity that it seemed to the garrison that not one of them would be left alive, and they decided to abandon the city in secret and at night. The locals got wind of this, catching up with many, as they fled across causeways that span the lake, and killing them in great numbers, as, indeed, they had every right to […]” (B.d. Las Casas 1992d, 51).33 This event by which Hernán Cortés was forced to retreat was later called the Black Night. Las Casas sums up his moral judgment: “the only rights these perfidious crusaders have earned which can be upheld in human, divine or natural law are the right to damnation” (B.d. Las Casas 1992d, 53–54).34 Las Casas also writes about King Paris (or Cutara) close to Panama, who pursues Spaniards who have just robbed him of a huge treasure: “[King Paris] and his men sat about them valiantly, killing fifty of them, severely wounding many others, putting them to flight and making off with all the gold” (B.d. Las Casas 1992d, 36).35 And in Jalisco, New Spain, after having been exposed to unprecedented terror by the Spanish, the local tribes “finally began to offer a measure of organized resistance, killing a handful of their oppressors, as in all justice they were fully entitled to do” (B.d. Las Casas 1992d, 69).36 In Trinidad, Las Casas reports on a 32  “Vista por los indios cosa tan injusta e crueldad tan nunca vista, en tantos inocentes sin culpa perpetrada, los que habían sufrido con tolerancia la prisión no menos injusta de su universal señor […] entonces pónense en armas toda la ciudad y vienen sobre ellos, y, heridos muchos de los españoles, apenas se pudieron escapar” (B.d. Las Casas 1988b, 51). 33  “[C]ombaten a todos juntos de tal manera y tantos días, que, temiendo todos morir, acordaron una noche salir de la ciudad. Sabido por los indios, mataron gran cantidad de cristianos en las puentes de la laguna, con justísima y sancta guerra” (B.d. Las Casas 1988b, 51–52). 34  “[Q]ue de derecho natural e humano y divino es todo aire cuanto se hace para que valga, si no es el reatu e obligación que les queda a los fuegos infernales […]” (B.d. Las Casas 1988b, 53). 35  “[El rey Paris] [j]untó presto la más gente que pudo, e, a cabo de dos otros días, alcanzó los cristianos, que llevaban sus ciento y treinta o curarenta mil castellanos, e da en ellos varonilmente, e mata cincuenta cristianos, e tómales todo el oro, escapándose los otros huyendo e bien heridos” (B.d. Las Casas 1988b, 46). 36  “[…] de desesperados (viéndose todos los demás tan cruelmente perecer), se alzasen y fuense a los montes, y matasen muy justa y dignamente algunos españoles” (B.d. Las Casas 1988b, 59).

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couple of cases in which the locals exact their vengeance for Spanish treachery and brutality by killing both Franciscan and Dominican friars. Las Casas himself was almost killed. However, as Las Casas explains, “they did so justly according to their own lights, for they thought the missionaries had been party to the act of treachery […]” (B.d. Las Casas 1992d, 90).37 The reason Indian resistance does not take up more space is, in part, because resistance had only limited success. Spanish conquerors were stronger, and it was very difficult to organize resistance against intruders who were willing to use massive violence; and in part, because it is not the aim of the report to discuss Indian resistance. Yet, contrary to what Daniel Castro claims, Las Casas does, in fact, record several occurrences of indigenous resistance, and he speaks with utmost respect about all the local chiefs, some of whom he met himself. On the basis of just war theory and presuming the national sovereignty of the Indian nations, he defends their right to resist Spanish violence and to avenge themselves on the Spanish conquerors. Las Casas turns the just war argument used by his opponents to defend the Spanish conquest around and exploits it as a weapon against the conquerors themselves: Considérese por los cristianos y que saben algo de Dios e de razón, e aun de las leyes humanas, que tales pueden parar los corazones de cualquiera gente, que vive en sus tierras segura e no sabe que deba nada a nadie, e que tiene sus naturales señores, las nuevas que les dijeren así de súpito: daos a obedescer a un rey estraño, que nunca vistes ni oístes, e, si no, sabed que luego os hemos de hacer pedazos. Especialmente viendo por experiencia que así luego lo hacen. (B.d. Las Casas 1988b, 52) Any reasonable person who knows anything of God, of rights and of civil law can imagine for himself what the likely reaction would be of any people living peaceably within their own frontiers, unaware that they owe allegiance to anyone save their natural lords, were a stranger suddenly to issue a demand along the following lines: ‘You shall henceforth obey a foreign king, whom you have never seen nor ever heard of and, if you do not, we will cut you to pieces’—especially when they discover that these strangers are indeed quite prepared to carry out this threat to the letter. (B.d. Las Casas 1992d, 53; my emphasis) 37  “Y así los indios tomaron venganza dellos justamente, matándolos, aunque inocentes, porque estimaron que ellos habían sido causa de aquella traición […]” (B.d. Las Casas 1988b, 68).

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Here, Las Casas mocks the requirimiento (of 1513), which was a declaration read to the American Indians in Spanish upon arrival in new territories. The declaration, written by Palacios Rubios refers to the papal bull of 1493, which gave the Spanish the divine right of sovereignty in any land west of Cape Verde. The Indians were given the ‘free’ choice of surrendering to Spanish rule or being killed. As Las Casas adds: “Such a recognition of suzerainty has no standing in law whatsoever” (B.d. Las Casas 1992d, 53).38 According to just war theory, a nation cannot trespass on a foreign nation’s border unless it has been attacked by that nation. If a nation is attacked, without having provoked it, that nation has the right to fight back. As formulated by Las Casas: The Indians have a right that “they quite properly enjoy under natural, divine, and Roman law to defend themselves by cutting the Spanish forces to pieces and, if only they were sufficient in number and possessed of the necessary weapons, throwing them out of their land once and for all” (B.d. Las Casas 1992d, 70).39 The Spanish are not only ‘inhuman beasts’ or ‘devils in a human form’; they are also, and more extremely, called ‘outlaws’ (ibid. 129) (B.d. Las Casas 1988b, 88). They are not within a political order or an order of civilization that respects national borders. Thus, Las Casas frames his moral and religious tale in the context of just war theory and international politics. This is a political argument: No matter who the Indians are, they have a king and own their land, and no one has the right to intrude upon them. Is it true then, as Pagden claims, that Las Casas “never once denied that the Spanish Crown was the legitimate ruler of the Americas, and [that] he persisted until his death in the belief that the indigenous peoples had, in ignorance but in good faith, voluntarily surrendered their natural sovereignty to the King of Spain”? (Pagden 1993, xv–xvi). I do not think so. In his last works—primarily, De Thesauris, Doce Dudas and De Regia Potestate, Las Casas elaborates on the sovereignty of the Indian communities. He underlines again and again that freedom is an intrinsic part of rational nature and, therefore, a natural right (“de derecho natural” (B.d. Las Casas 1990, 37)). Even kings cannot go against natural law since their power rests solely on the free consent of the people (B.d. Las Casas 1990,  “[N]o […] adquieren una punta de derecho” (B.d. Las Casas 1988b, 53).  “[…] la justíssima causa, y causas muchas llenas de toda justicia, que los indios tienen por ley natural, divina y humana, de los hacer pedazos, si fuerzas e armas tuviesen, y echallos de sus tierras […]” (B.d. Las Casas 1988b, 59). 38 39

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61).40 In De Thesauris (1563), he stresses that the Incan king was the legitimate ruler of the Inca community and that power should be restored to his successor: Aquel Rey Inga y sus sucesores son príncipes y señores supremos de todos los reinos “del Peru”, no admiten otro superior a ellos y tienen imperio justo, mero y mixto y omnímoda potestad y jurisdicción, como los demás reyes libres del mundo. (B.d. Las Casas 1992a, 69) (The Inca king and his successors are princes and supreme lords of all the kingdoms of Peru; they do not allow anyone above themselves, and they have legitimate power, both higher and lower (“mero y mixto”), omnipotent power and jurisdiction, like all the other free kings of the world (My translation).)

Las Casas argues that it is against natural law to impose a new king upon the Indians without their consent (B.d. Las Casas 1992a, 195). Since Spanish rule has only been established by using force, it is illegitimate; and, as he argues, the Inca kingdom should be restored to its rightful owners. This latter demand has been called “a powerful statement about jus post bellum” by Daniel Brunstetter (Brunstetter 2018, 241). Even the Catholic faith cannot take away the ownership and dominion of the Indians (B.d. Las Casas 1992a, 77). Here, Las Casas does not only defend the basic individual freedom of all people. He also defends the freedom of every community, and he links the two kinds of liberty: “Quod omnis tangit debet ab omnibus approbari” (“lo que ataña a todos por todos debe ser aprobado,” “What effects all must be approved by all”) (B.d. Las Casas 1992a, 199).41 Both the individual and the community must give consent: “all and everyone” (“todos y cada uno” (B.d. Las Casas 1992a, 199)). He even stresses that he means both powerful and simple people (“tanto los poderosos como los particulares y gente sencilla” (B.d. Las Casas 1992a, 201)): Lo que tiene que aprovechar a todos o a todos puede perjudicar ha de hacerse con consentimiento de todos, por lo que se require el consentimiento 40  Las Casas writes: “El príncipe no puede hacer nada contra el derecho natural y divino” (B.d. Las Casas 1990, 111). 41  Las Casas draws on Baldus. See Cárdenas Bunsen for a fuller explanation (Cárdenas Bunsen 2014, 808).

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de todos los hombres libres, es decir, de todo el pueblo. (B.d. Las Casas 1990, 65) (That which benefits everybody or that can damage everybody has to be made with everyone’s consent, it requires the consent of all free human beings, that is, of all the people (my translation).)

The consequence of this radical point is that not even a king can act on behalf of the people. He cannot do anything that puts the rights and sovereignty of the people at risk without their explicit consent (B.d. Las Casas 1990, 99). In De Thesauris (1563), a book that Las Casas called his “testament,” he argues that, in relation to pagans who have not converted to Christianity, the Pope only has “voluntary jurisdiction” (“jurisdicción voluntaria” (B.d. Las Casas 1992a, 471)). According to Cárdenas Bunsen, the concept of “voluntary jurisdiction” was not new, but it was a new and radical gesture to apply this concept to the situation in America. The principle of “Quod omnis tangit debet ab omnibus approbari” demanded consent from all individuals. As Cárdenas Bunsen says, this principle moves the jurisdiction into the public sphere and “enables the political participation of the natives” (Cárdenas Bunsen 2014, 814). As Las Casas has argued elsewhere in accordance with Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, the human being is basically a social being. Freedom is an essential and natural part of their lives. Yet, it is not understood as a private liberty but, rather, as a condition for public life (Beuchot 1994, 91). When Las Casas attacks slavery, he does so at its very foundational level: it is a crime against individual freedom and it corrupts social cohabitation. Everywhere, he stresses that slavery is against nature. In De Regia Potestate, he argues: “Servitude does not have a natural but only an accidental cause” (my translation).42 He explains his dictum that all things43 are born free, by saying: “God does not make one person the slave of another but grants the same free will to all persons” (my translation).44 A person under slavery loses his soul,45 and it is natural that he will go to war to gain his  “La servidumbre no tiene una causa natural, sino accidental” (B.d. Las Casas 1990, 35).  Las Casas uses the word “things.” It includes all beings, created by God. 44  “Como todos tienen la misma natrualeza, Dios no hace a uno siervo del otro sino que concede a todos el mismo libre albedrío” (B.d. Las Casas 1990, 35). 45  “ningún hombre bueno pierde la libertad sin perder al mismo tiempo su alma” (B.d. Las Casas 1990, 39). 42

43

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f­ reedom, for, as he says: “What reason for war is more just than the refusal of slavery?” (my translation).46 Brevísima is ideologically in line with some of the ideas developed in later works by Las Casas. Reading the atrocity story through the insights of these works gives it a new legal dimension. As Cardenas Bunsen has argued convincingly, Brevísima was written to show that the Spanish conquest was characterized by violence and the spread of fear and thus “that the proper conditions for the granting of free consent never took place in the Indies” (Cárdenas Bunsen 2014, 811).

The Legacy of Las Casas: The American Independence Movement, Abolitionism, and the Black Legend Las Casas’ writings have always been surrounded by controversy. Some see him as a heroic defender of Indian rights, a firm and innovative thinker in political and legal philosophy, a tireless fighter and advocate who, against all odds and huge resistance from his contemporaries, fought for the human rights of the oppressed. Other critics see him as a paternalistic instrument of imperialism, self-absorbed in his writing, too inflammable in his political rhetoric, too chaotic and unoriginal in his philosophy. However that may be, his publications have had a tremendous influence in subsequent centuries, and the most influential of all his books is the small Brevísima relación de la destruición de las Indias. It is a brutal book, horrible to read, exposing all the violence of the conquest; but, as I have argued, it does not depict the indigenous people only as helpless victims but as people with political and legal autonomy. One fact that can back up that reading is that Las Casas’ work in general but Brevísima in particular were an inspiration for the American independence movement and later wars of independence. For instance, the influence may be seen in the work of Guaman Poma de Ayala (1535–1616), who denounced the ill treatment of Indians in the Andes and even quoted some of Las Casas’ most provocative passages (Adorno 2007, 21–22). And you find the influence in important figures of later independence movements such as Simon Bolivar, Fray Servando Teresa de Mier (New Spain), and José Antonio Saco (Cuba). Rolena Adorno argues that the argument between Las Casas and his opponent 46  “¿Qué causa hay más justa de mover Guerra, que el rechazo de la esclavitud?” (B.d. Las Casas 1992a, 241).

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Ginés de Sepúlveda in the famous Valladolid debate (1550–1551) created a model for all later debates. She writes, “soon I found that all the writers who are commonly read in the colonial canon could be inserted into the Las Casas-Sepúlveda matrix” (Adorno 2007, x, 80–81). Las Casas entered into the debates in a manner that became exemplary and set the agenda— especially, for the fight of the oppressed against political subjection. José-­ Manuel Barreto even sees Las Casas as a forerunner of a third-world history of anti-imperialism (Barreto 2013, 141). It is, perhaps, not so surprising that Las Casas’ defense of the rights of the Indians could be used in later American independence movements. It is more surprising to see, due to the controversy about his support of black slavery, that Las Casas’ rhetoric inspired the abolitionist movement against black slavery (Schmidt-Nowara 2013, 237). At an early point in his life, Las Casas infamously supported in the text Memorial de remedios para las Indias (1516 and 1518) the enslavement of Africans to alleviate the situation of the Indians.47 Later, Las Casas withdrew this support. It happened in the third volume of his Historia de las indias (written from 1527 to 1561 but only published in the nineteenth century) in which he wrote about Portuguese merchants who mistreated and enslaved Africans in the fifteenth century, actions legitimized by papal bulls in the mid-fifteenth century but without a foundation in just war theory (Adorno 2007, 67). Talking about himself in the third person, Las Casas writes in his Historia de las Indias: “When the cleric Las Casas first gave that advice—to grant the license to bring black slaves to the islands—he was not aware of the unjust ways in which the Portuguese captured and made slaves of them. But after he found out, he would not have proposed it for all the world 47  In the Memorial de remedios para las Indias from 1516, he writes, “[…] en lugar de los indios que había de tener [en] las dichas comunidades, sustente Su Alteza en cada una veinte negros, o otros esclavos en las minas, de comida la que hobiere menester, y será muy mayor servicio para Su Alteza y ganancia, porque se cogerá mucho más oro que se cogerá teniendo doblados indios de los que había de tener en ellas” (B.d. Las Casas 1995a, 28) (“[…] instead of the Indians that you have in those communities, you should have approximately twenty blacks, or other slaves, in the mines, and there should be enough food, and it would be more beneficial to Your Highness and secure more gains, for you would accumulate much more gold than you would do by doubling the number of Indians.” According to Armando Lampe, “otros esclavos” (“other slaves”) referred to white slaves (Lampe 2018, 425). In the Memorial de remedios para las Indias from 1518, Las Casas recommends that each Christian man should have two black male and two black female slaves (“[…] que vuestra alteza haga merçed a los cristianos que agora están en las yslas, que puedan tener cada uno dos esclavos negros y dos negras […]” (B.d. Las Casas 1995b, 52).

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because, from the beginning, the black people of Africa were enslaved unjustly and tyrannically exactly as had happened to the Indians” (my translation).48 This is what he writes in vol. 3; but, already in vol. 1 he harshly condemns the Portuguese ‘invasion’ of the Gold Coast. In much the same language that he condemns the destruction of the Indies, he condemns the violence in Africa and the unjust enslavement of the Africans: […] insultos y gravísimos males y detestables injusticias, daños y escándalos de los portogueses [sic] en aquellos descubrimientos por aquellos tiempos contra los moradores de aquellas tierras, inocentes para con ellos, fuesen moros o judíos o negros o alárabes […]. (B.d. Las Casas 1994a, 471) ([…] the insults and the very serious evils and detestable injustices, damages and scandalous acts committed by the Portuguese in those discoveries in those times against the inhabitants of those lands, who were all innocent in relation to the Portuguese, whether they be Moors, Jews, Blacks or Arabs […]. (my translation).)

He quotes the emotional narration by the Portuguese historian Gómez Eanes about the capture and dispersal of African slaves among Portuguese ‘conquerors,’ a situation of despair in which families were separated from each other, but he criticizes Eanes for exculpating the Portuguese simply because they had good intentions. Las Casas concludes that even the fact that the Africans would be christened could not excuse the crimes of violence, murder, and the captivity of innocent people (B.d. Las Casas 1994a, 475). The idea that Las Casas was a strong supporter of the enslavement of Africans and that he was even the instigator of the transatlantic trade survived in some form for centuries—in particular, because the work Historia de las Indias was not published until the nineteenth century. One of his early and most vigorous defenders was the French abolitionist Abbé Gregoire (1750–1831), who, in his Apologie de Las Casas (1800), claimed that the critique of Las Casas was unfounded. Later, the British 48  “Este aviso de que se diese licencia para traer esclavos negros a estas tierras dio primero el clérigo Casas, no advirtiendo la injusticia con que los portogueses [sic] los toman y hacen esclavos; el cual, después de que cayó en ello, no lo diera por cuanto había en el mundo porque [desde entonces] siempre los tuvo por injusta y tiránicamente hechos esclavos; porque la misma razón es dellos que de los indios” (B.d. Las Casas 1994c, 2191).

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abolitionist William Wilberforce (1759–1833) referred directly to Las Casas for inspiration for abolitionist arguments that could “have weight with the Ecclesiastics of [his] country” (quoted in Schmidt-Nowara (Schmidt-Nowara 2013, 241). Recent research has given us a more nuanced understanding and has established that Las Casas could not have been the instigator of black slavery since this trade had already begun when he wrote his recommendations in 1511 (Lampe 2018, 430).49 Despite his ambiguity regarding black slavery, his thinking on the natural rights of the Native Americans was an inspiration in the later abolitionist movement. The advantage of his universalist thinking was that it could be transported and used in other cultural contexts, in relation to completely different ‘others.’ However, Las Casas is also interesting because he so clearly demonstrates all the problems of universalist human rights discourses, including their non-universalistic foundation. As Brunstetter has argued, Las Casas is trapped within a Christian understanding of the world. He is not able to see other religions as equal to Christianity; and, therefore, he is caught within a non-egalitarian morality. Nevertheless, Brunstetter argues, this is not unique to Las Casas but marks all discourses that argue for a better political and legal system. For instance, he argues, a “non-egalitarian egalitarianism” persists in the French Enlightenment and the American Revolution. Though God was generally replaced with modern natural law, enlightenment, or democracy, exclusions still took place. To be included in post-Revolutionary North America, Native Americans had to adhere to Enlightenment principles; and, if they resisted this, they were not accepted as full members. In fact, in the post-Revolutionary context, the situation grew worse for the Native Americans than it had been previously: Before 1776, it was understandable, or so the argument went, that the Indians failed to follow Las Casas’ example given his ideals were overpowered by the actions of his fanatical countrymen and the system of oppression that characterized Spanish colonialism. However, following the triumph of American democracy, such an excuse was no longer justifiable. After the American Revolution, a Las Casasian faith in the Other was no longer philosophically acceptable because the true colors of Enlightenment philosophy—the marriage between natural liberty and politics—had been revealed. 49  For a longer presentation of the controversy about Las Casas’ support of the enslavement of the Africans, see Rolena Adorno (Adorno 2007, 61–69) and Santa Arias (Arias 2008, 279–288).

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The Indians retained the chance to assimilate to an enlightened proto-­ European culture, but those who did not assimilate and chose to persist in their traditional ways ceased to be worthy of defending, and became the other Other—true barbarians. (Brunstetter 2012, 12)

The inherent inegalitarianism of egalitarianism and the exclusionary foundation of universalism seem to pose a general problem for human rights even today. The problem is not limited to Christian natural rights thinking but may be found in any universalist rights thinking. It may be boiled down to the question of how to include anti-universalists in universalist thinking. This is both a philosophical and political headache, but the problem haunts many human rights debates since a universalist rights thinking will always be marked by a certain degree of “cultural othercide.” The test of egalitarianism is whether the ‘other’ has the right to resist the moral foundation of your inclusion of him/her. According to Brunstetter, the paradoxical legacy of Las Casas is not the idealism of his defense of the Indians but the conditional pragmatism of his tolerance. Brunstetter states that, by “linking his defense of the Indians to assimilation, [he] establishes the conditions for legitimized illiberalism at some point in the future” (Brunstetter 2012, 11). Brunstetter convincingly argues that European and North American modernity is founded on an idea of peaceful, inclusive ‘conversion’ that blurs the mechanisms of exclusion rather than admitting to them openly. Thus, in a negative way, the work of Las Casas is also a warning not to exaggerate the benefits and the glory of the political inclusion of oppressed others. Finally, one last legacy of Las Casas is the paradoxical marginalization of Spain within a European context. The reception of Brevísima is a testimony to the competitive political situation among the incipient European empires in early modernity. Brevísima painted a horrible image of the Spanish conquerors as bloodthirsty, greedy, and depraved men; and, as previously mentioned, it greatly helped to create the Black Legend of the Spanish conquest. Brevísma was enormously popular outside of Spain. Between 1578 and 1648, twenty-one Dutch, eight Italian, six French, four German, two English, and two Latin translations were published. All in all, forty-three translations appeared in seventy years (Varela 1999, 50). According to Consuelo de Varela, in the hands of the British, the Dutch, and the French, this legendary book turned into a “political weapon of the first order” (“un arma política de primer orden” (Varela 1999, 50)). In the words of

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the historian Antonio de Solís: “The worst of all… is that foreign writers support their malice by citing Father Bartolomé de Las Casas… whose words they copy and quote as authentic, infallible proof of what they charge the nation with” (quoted in Schmidt-Nowara, The Conquest of History (Schmidt-Nowara 2006, 133). Writing about the Spanish inquisition in his Book of Martyrs (1554), John Foxe drew upon Las Casas’ descriptions of Spanish brutality, saying that “the extreme dealing and cruel ravening of these Catholic Inquisitors of Spain, who, under the pretended visor for religion, do nothing but seek their private gain and commodity.” Another clear example is William D’Avenant, who, in his play The Cruelty of the Spaniards (1658), has the Native Americans complain about the hypocrisy and beastlike behavior of the Spaniards. Yes, the Spaniards are worse than beasts: “How comes wild cruelty in humans breasts?/Proud Man more cruell is than Beasts.” Beasts kill their prey for hunger and do not prolong the pain of the victims. However, the Spaniard is so “refin’d in cruelty/ As not to make men quickly dye./He knows by death all pains are past./But as he hath the skill/A thousand waies to kill/So hath he more to make pains last” (D’Avenant 1658, 22). In the play, the British conquerors are described as benign conquerors who take away the fear of the Native Americans. The title of the English translation of Brevísima, which came out in 1656 (translated by I. Phillipps), stressed the sorrow of the miserable victims and the cruel massacre of millions of Native Americans: The Tears of the Indians: Being an Historical and true Account of the Cruel Massacres and Slaughters of above Twenty Millions of Innocent People (B.d. Las Casas 1953). The title of the French translation in 1579 by Jacques Miggrode stressed the tyranny and cruelty: Tyrannies et cruautez des Espagnols, perpétrées es Indes Occidentales, qu’on dit le Nouveau Monde (B.d. Las Casas 1579). Images of Spanish cruelty circulated among the British, French, and Dutch and served to support the idea of the benign nature of British, French, and Dutch colonialism in comparison with the Spanish.50 Despite the fact that Spain was the dominant empire in early modernity, it came to be marginalized or even subjected to “racism” by the other empires, which had a political interest in regarding Spain as only half-European. As Walter Mignolo has explained about the mechanism of othering: 50  See Juan Francisco Maura for an analysis of the constitutive traits of the Black Legend, Las Casas’ role in it, and its development over the centuries (Maura 2006, 213–240).

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First, Spain, and later England and France, distinguished themselves from the Muslims (in the north of Africa) and the “Turks” in the East (the Ottoman Empire). Second—and this is when the Black Legend comes into play—England distinguished itself from the Spaniards, who, the English said, had Moorish blood and acted as barbarians in the New World. (Mignolo 2007, 313)

According to Mignolo, so strong was the belief in Spanish barbarism that Immanuel Kant could state the following as a fact about the Spaniard: “[The Spaniard is] centuries behind in the sciences. He resists any reform; he is proud of not having to work; he is of romantic quality of spirit, as the bullfight shows; he is cruel as the former auto-da-fé shows; and he displays in his taste an origin that is partly non-European” (quoted in (Mignolo 2007, 313)). Paradoxically, Las Casas contributed to the ‘racism’ against and the marginalization of Spain in a European context that has lasted almost until this day. Though Las Casas was acknowledged as a forerunner of humanism— for instance, by Voltaire, he was often seen as a “beacon of hope amidst Spanish fanaticism” (Brunstetter 2012, 11). This image was, of course, false. Las Casas was not alone. He drew heavily on the Thomistic thinking developed in the Salamanca school by Francisco de Vitoria, Domingo del Soto, the previously mentioned Antonio de Montesinos, and many others. But the competing empires in Europe were more interested in promulgating the Black Legend about Spanish brutality than acknowledging the humanistic thinking of the Salamanca School and the Spanish promotion of human rights and international law. However, as I have argued, many of the ideas that circulated in the Spanish intellectual environment were ahead of their time and influenced later philosophers, both philosophers of international law such as Hugo Grotius and Samuel Pufendorf and modern natural philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes and John Locke (Alves and Moreira 2013, 106–107); (Scott 2000, 10a); (Koskenniemi 2011, 5). Before John Locke, Las Casas argued for individual liberty and legal and political equality based on the principle of natural reason.51 51  According to Quentin Skinner, John Locke reiterated “a number of the most central assumptions of the Jesuit and Dominican works” when he wrote Two Treatises of Government. As he says, Locke “agrees with their sense of the pivotal role which ought to be assigned to the ius naturale in any legitimate political society, describing it as ‘an eternal rule to all men’ and insisting that all the enactments of our legislators must be ‘conformable’ to its demands” (Skinner 1978, 174).

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The originality of Las Casas’ atrocity story, Brevísima, is that it creates a direct link between the denunciation of crimes and the political and legal rights of the oppressed. It depicts the victim both as a helpless, vulnerable person and as a political subject who has the ability and right to resist. Its forensic-allegorical form made it possible for the contemporary Spanish reader to understand that all the atrocious crimes of torture and murder, committed far away, were of importance to his and her own moral reality. The atrocity story functioned as a moral telescope, visualizing the crimes before the forum of the Spanish people. Its allegorical theatricality turned readers into spectators but spectators who were meant to understand not only the political status of these strange people living very far away and the illegitimacy of the Spanish violence against them but also their own moral responsibility for the fact that the violence continued. Borrowing a term from Augusto Boal, audiences were (ideally) turned into spect-actors. Though based in a conservative Christian moral codex, Las Casas created in Brevísima a modern and potentially activist form of the atrocity story.

References Adorno, Rolena. 2007. The polemics of possession in Spanish American narrative. New Haven: Yale University Press. ———. 2019. The Not-So-Brief Story of the Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias. In Bartolomé de las Casas, O.P: History, philosophy, and theology in the age of European expansion, Studies in the history of Christian traditions, ed. David Thomas and Rady Roldán-Figueroa Orique, 29–57. Boston, Brill: Leiden. Alves, Andre Azevedo, and Jose Moreira. 2013. The Salamanca School. In Major conservative and libertarian thinkers, ed. John Meadowcroft, 1st ed. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Arias, Santa. 2008. Equal rights and individual freedom: Enlightenment intellectuals and the Lascasian apology for black African slavery. Romance Quarterly 55 (4): 279–291. https://doi.org/10.3200/RQTR.55.4.279-­291. Barreto, José-Manuel. 2013. Imperialism and decolonization as scenarios of human rights history. In Human rights from a third world perspective: Critique, history and international law, ed. José-Manuel Barreto, 140–171. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publisher. Beuchot, Mauricio. 1994. Los fundamentos de los derechos humanos en Bartolomé de las Casas. Biblioteca A; 3. Anthropos, Barcelona. Boal, Augusto. 2006. The aesthetics of the oppressed. London: Routledge. Bromley, David G., Anson D.  Shupe Jr., and J.C.  Ventimiglia. 1979. Atrocity Tales, the unification church, and the social construction of evil. Journal of Communication 29 (3): 42–53.

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Brunstetter, Daniel R. 2012. Tensions of modernity: Las Casas and his legacy in the French enlightenment, 1–173. New  York: Routledge. https://doi. org/10.4324/9780203114315. ———. 2018. Las Casas and the concept of just war. In Bartolomé de las Casas, OP: History, philosophy, and theology in the age of European expansion, ed. David Thomas and Rady Roldán-Figueroa Orique, 218–259. Leiden: Brill. Butler, Judith. 2006. Precarious life: The powers of mourning and violence. London: Verso. Cárdenas Bunsen, José A. 2014. Consent, voluntary jurisdiction and native political Agency in Bartolomé de Las Casas' final writings. Bulletin of Spanish studies (2002) 91 (6): 793–817. https://doi.org/10.1080/14753820.2014.888887. Carozza, Paolo G. 2003. From conquest to constitutions: Retrieving a Latin American tradition of the idea of human rights. Human Rights Quarterly 25 (2): 281–313. https://doi.org/10.1353/hrq.2003.0023. Castro, Daniel. 2007. Another face of empire: Bartolomé de las Casas, indigenous rights, and ecclesiastical imperialism. Latin America otherwise. Durham: Duke University Press. Conley, Tom. 1992. De Bry’s Las Casas. In Amerindian images and the legacy of Columbus, ed. Rene Jara and Nicholas Spadaccini, 103. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Copeland, Rita, and Peter T. Struck. 2010. The Cambridge companion to allegory. The Cambridge companions complete collection. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. D’Avenant, William. 1658. The cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru: Exprest by instrumentall and vocall musick, and by art of perspective in scenes, & c. Represented daily at the Cockpit in Drury-Lane, at three after noone punctually. London: Early English books online. Printed for Henry Herringman, and are to be sold at his shop at the Anchor in the Lower walk in the New Exchange. Dawes, James. 2007. That the world may know: Bearing witness to atrocity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Fernández, Isaico Pérez. 1994. Estudio preliminar y análisis crítico. In Bartolomé de las Casas. Historia de las Indias, Obras Completas, ed. Paulino Castañeda Delgado, vol. 3, 1–322. Madrid: Allianza. Fischer-Lichte, Erika, and Jo Riley. 1997. The show and the gaze of theatre: A European perspective. Studies in theatre history and culture. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. Ginzburg, Carlo. 2017. Civilization and barbarism. Sign Systems Studies 45 (3–4): 249–262. https://doi.org/10.12697/SSS.2017.45.3-­4.03. Greer, Margaret Rich, Walter Mignolo, and Maureen Quilligan. 2007. Rereading the black legend the discourses of religious and racial difference in the renaissance empires. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Hanke, Lewis. 1965. “La actualidad de Bartolomé de las Casas”, Prólogo. In Tratados. Cronistas de Indias, ed. Lewis and Manuel Giménez Fernández Hanke, xi–xix. México and Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura económica. ———. 2002. The Spanish struggle for justice in the conquest of America. Southern Methodist University Press ed. Dallas, TX: Southern Methodist University Press. Hunt, Lynn Avery. 2008. Inventing human rights: A history. Paperback ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. Koskenniemi, Martti. 2011. Empire and international law: The real Spanish contribution. The University of Toronto Law Journal 61 (1): 1–36. https://doi. org/10.3138/utlj.61.1.001. Lampe, Armando. 2018. Las Casas and African slavery in the Caribbean: A third conversion. In Bartolomé de las Casas, OP: History, philosophy, and theology in the age of European expansion, ed. David Thomas and Rady Roldán-Figueroa Orique, 421–436. Leiden: Brill. Lantigua, David M. 2015. The freedom of the gospel: Aquinas, subversive natural law, and the Spanish wars of religion. Modern Theology 31 (2): 312–337. https://doi.org/10.1111/moth.12148. ———. 2020. Infidels and empires in a New World order: Early modern Spanish contributions to international legal thought. Law and Christianity. New York: Cambridge University Press. Las Casas, Bartolomé de. 1579. Tyrannies et cruautez des Espagnols, perpetrees és Indes occidentales, qu'on dit le Nouveau Monde; brievement descrites en langue castillane par l'evesque Don Frere Bartelemy de Las Casas ou Casaus,… fidelement traduictes par Jaques de Miggrode, pour servir d'exemple et advertissement aux XVII provinces du Païs Bas. A Anvers, chez François de Ravelenghien joignant le portail septentrional de l'Eglise nostre Dame. M. DC. LXXIX. ———. 1953. The tears of the Indians: Being an historical and true account of the cruel massacres and slaughters of above twenty millions of innocent people: Committed by the Spaniards in the islands of Hispaniola, Cuba, Jamaica, etc. Stanford, CA: Academic Reprints. ——— 1974. In defence of the Indians: the defence of the most reverend lord, Don Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, of the order of preachers, late bishop of Chiapa, against the peoples of the New World discovered across the seas. DeKalb, Ill. ———. 1988a. Apología. In Obras Completas, ed. Angel Losada, vol. 9, 43–667. Madrid: Alianza. ———. 1988b. Brevísima relación de la destruición de las Indias. In Obras Completas, ed. Ramón Hernández, vol. 10, 29–94. Madrid: Alianza. ———. 1990. De regia potestate. In Obras Completas, ed. Jaime González Rodríguez, vol. 12, 12–223. Madrid: Alianza. ———. 1992a. De Thesauris. In Obras Completas, ed. Angel Losada, vol. 11.1, 12–511. Madrid: Alianza.

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———. 1992b. Entre los Remedios. In Obras Completas, ed. Ramón Hernández, vol. 10, 287–360. Madrid: Alianza. ———. 1992c. In defense of the Indians: The defense of the most reverend Lord, Don Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, of the order of preachers, late bishop of Chiapa, against the persecutors and slanderers of the peoples of the New World discovered across the seas. In , ed. Stafford Poole. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press. ———. 1992d. In A short account of the destruction of the indies. Translated by Griffin Nigel, ed. Griffin Nigel. Harmondsworth: Penguin. ———. 1994a. Historia de las Indias. Vol. I. In Obras Completas, Vol. 3, ed. Jesús Pérez Fernández, 327–779. Madrid: Alianza. ———. 1994b. Historia de las Indias. Vol. II.  In Obras Completas, Vol. 4, ed. Miguel Ángel and Jesús Ángel Barreda Medina, 827–1580. Madrid: Alianza. ———. 1994c. Historia de las Indias. Vol. III.  In Obras Completas, Vol. 5, ed. Miguel Ángel and Jesús Ángel Barreda Medina, 1749–2502. Madrid: Alianza. ———. 1995a. Memorial de remedios para las Indias (1516). In Obras Completas, Vol. 13, ed. Paulino Castañeda Delgado, Carlos Rueda, Carmen Godínez, and Inmaculada de La Corte, 23–48. Madrid: Alianza. ———. 1995b. Memorial de Remedios para las Indias (1518). In Obras Completas, Vol. 13, ed. Paulino Castañeda Delgado, Carlos Rueda, Carmen Godínez, and Inmaculada de La Corte, 49–53. Madrid: Alianza. Las Casas, Bartolomé de, L. Pereña, and V. Abril. 1974. Derechos civiles y políticos. Madrid: Editora Nacional. Losada, Angel. 1992. Introducción. In Bartolomé de las Casas. De Thesauris. Obras Completas 11.1, ed. Angel Losada, I–XX. Madrid: Alianza. Luño, Antonio-Enrique Pérez. 1990. Introducción. In Bartolomé de las Casas. De Regia Potestate. Obras Completas, ed. Jaime González Rodríguez, vol. 12, I– XXXIX. Madrid: Alianza. Maura, Juan Francisco. 2006. La hispanofobia a través de algunos textos de la conquista de América: propaganda política y frivolidad académica. Bulletin of Spanish studies (2002) 83 (2): 213–240. https://doi.org/10.108 0/1475382062000346171. Mayer, Alicia. 2014. El pensamiento de Bartolome de las Casas en el discurso sobre el indígena. Una perspectiva comparada. Historia Mexicana 63 (3 (251)): 1121–1179. Mignolo, Walter. 2007. What does the black legend have to do with race? In Rereading the black legend. The discourses of religious and racial difference in the renaissance empires, ed. Margaret Rich Greer, W. Mignolo, and M. Quilligan, 312–324. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Orique, David Thomas, and Rady Roldán-Figueroa. 2018. Bartolomé de las Casas, OP: History, philosophy, and theology in the age of European expansion, Studies in the history of Christian traditions. Vol. 189. Leiden: Brill.

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Pagden, Anthony. 1993. European encounters with the New World: From renaissance to romanticism. New Haven: Yale U. P. ———. 2004. Introduction. In A short account of the destruction of the indies, ed. Nigel Griffin, xiii–xiv. London: Penguin. Quijano, Francisco. 2015. Ser libres bajo el poder del rey. El republicanismo y constitucionalismo de Bartolomé de las Casas. Historia Mexicana 65 (1 (257)): 7–64. https://doi.org/10.24201/hm.v65i1.3133. Rawlings, Helen. 2005. The Spanish inquisition. Historical association studies. Oxford: Blackwell Pub. Schmidt-Nowara, Christopher. 2006. The conquest of history: Spanish colonialism and national histories in the nineteenth century. Pitt Latin American series. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press. ———. 2013. Bartolomé de las Casas and the slave trade to Cuba circa 1820. In Connections after colonialims Eruope and Latin America in the 1820s, ed. Matthew and Gabriel B. Paquette Brown, 236–249. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. Scott, James Brown. 2000. The Spanish origin of international law: Francisco de Vitoria and his law of nations. Union, NJ: The Lawbook Exchange. Simonsen, Karen-Margrethe. 2016. The political Agency of Victims in atrocity Tales by Bartolomé de las Casas: The Spanish origin of human rights. In Discursive framings of human rights, ed. Karen-Margrethe Simonsen and Jonas Ross Kjærgård, 26–42. Routledge. Skinner, Quentin. 1978. The foundations of modern political thought, The age of reformation. Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sliwinski, Sharon. 2011. Human rights in camera. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sontag, Susan. 2003. Regarding the pain of others. London: Penguin Books. Tierney, Brian. 1997. The idea of natural rights: Studies on natural rights, natural law and church law, 1150-1625. In Emory University studies in law and religion, ed. John Witte, vol. 5. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press. Varela, Consuelo. 1999. Introducción biográfica y crítica. In Brevísima relación de la destruición de las Indias, Clásicos Castalia, ed. Consuelo Varela, 9–54. Madrid: Castalia. Vitoria, Francisco de. 1532. De Indis. De Jure belli. The First Relectio of the Reverend Father, Brother Franciscus de Victoria on the Indians Lately Discovered. Part 2. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/De_Indis_De_Jure_Belli/Part_2.

PART II

Comic Modes of Theatricality and Human Rights in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth Century Spain

CHAPTER 4

Carnivalesque Theatricality: Defeat, Revenge and Collective Rights in Micael de Carvajal’s Court of Death and the Tragedy of Atawallpa’s Death

Death is a viewpoint, from which you clearly see the depth of guilt and the length of pain (Lope de Vega) (my translation) Es la muerte un mirador/De donde claro se ojea/Lo profundo de la culpa/Y lo largo de la pena (Lope de Vega 1999, 24). Tears of blood, wrought, wrought from his happiness; a mirror stained with his tears. Paint an image of his cadaver! (An elegy in Quechua about the death of Atahualpa) Lágrimas de sangre arrancadas, arrancadas/de su alegría;/espejo vertiente de sus lágrimas/ ¡Retratad su cadaver! (Anonymous 1955, 183). Spanish translation by José María Arguedas, (my translation into English).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 K.-M. Simonsen, Slavery and the Forensic Theatricality of Human Rights in the Spanish Empire, Palgrave Studies in Literature, Culture and Human Rights, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31531-2_4

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Micael de Carvajal’s theater play, Cortes de la Muerte (Court of Death, 1557)1 is one of the first Spanish plays to portray the conquest.2 The play contains 23 scenes. In scene 19 (Cena XIX), an Indian cacique (chief) and other Indians appear before the figure of Death in a court (presumably, in Spain) and present their complaints about the cruel mistreatment to which they and their fellow Americans have been subjected by the Spanish conquerors. Their complaints are met with sympathy; but, in the end, the court does not impose any punishment of or sanction against the violators of justice. In another remarkable American play—presumably, from the same period, we see a similar situation. However, in this work, we are situated in the Incan empire. The play begins just before the arrival of the Spaniards and depicts the encounter with and the violence of the Spaniards. We see the last days and the brutal murder of the Incan ruler, Atahualpa, in 1533. The work is anonymous and has the title Tragedia del fin de Atawallpa3 (Tragedy of Atawallpa’s Death).4 1  Cortes de casto amor and Cortes de la muerte are ascribed to Luis Hurtado de Toledo on the title page of the facsimile version. Most of the play was presumably written by Micael de Carvajal, so I refer to him as the main writer. I mention Hurtado de Toledo when it is relevant. References to scene 19 of Cortes de la Muerte are to the edition made by Carlos A. Jáuregui, translated by Mark Smith-Soto (Jáuregui 2008b). References to all other scenes of Cortes de casto amor and Cortes de la muerte are to the edition by Andrés Ortega del Álamo from 1964 (Carvajal 1964). The pagination in this edition and translation of scenes other than scene 19, are mine. 2  According to Consuelo Varela, this was not the first play to present Indians since they often appeared in comic and farcical presentations (Varela 2004, 342). Lope de Vega’s El nuevo mundo descubierto por Cristóbal Colón (1596–1603), which is often claimed to be the first (Antonucci 1995, 7), was much later. At least three American plays before Carvajal’s play treat the topic of the conquest and present Indians: Auto de juicio final by Fray Andrés de Olmos. It was performed in Tlaltelolco, Mexico, probably in 1533, and was seen by several people, all of whom described it as a marvelous play, including Bartolomé de Las Casas (Jáuregui 2008a, 4). Two other plays were presented in the 1530s: Toma de Rodas (1538) (portraying Hernán Cortés in the city of Mexico) and Conquista de Jerusalén (1539) (about Cortés and Pedro de Alvarado in Tlaxcala) (Varela 2004, 343). 3  On the cover, the name is spelled ‘Atawallpa’. However, in the play, he is called ‘Atau Wallpa’. The historical figure is most often called Atahualpa or Atahuallpa. When I refer to the historical person, I will use the spelling Atahualpa. When I refer to the protagonist of the play I will use the spelling Atau Wallpa. ‘Atau’ means ‘gloria’ or ‘military honor’, ‘wallpa’ derives from the verb ‘wallpay’ which means ‘to create’ or ‘to make new things’ (Lara 1993a, 23). 4  I refer to the bilingual edition Tragedia del fin de Atawallpa, ed. by Jesús Lara from 1993 (Lara 1993b). All translations into English are my own.

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Both the Spanish and the American play see the conquest from the Indian side. Like Las Casas’ atrocity story (discussed in Chap. 3), they expose and denounce the violence and injustice of the Conquest and the first colonial period. Just as it is in Las Casas, the Indians appear not as barbarians or ‘exotic others’ but as dignified rational citizens of American communities. The difference is that, in these plays, the Indians themselves speak. The theatrical stage becomes a political-legal forum, where the Indians seek to establish the forensic truth about the violence to which they have been and are exposed and to make a ‘claim’ for justice. Both plays are tragedies that depict fatal endings for their Indian protagonists, but they also explore the possibility of revenge, retribution and an acknowledgment of guilt on the Spanish side. They have two strategies for doing so: One is political and consists in arguing for the equality between the Spanish and Inca empires. Like Las Casas, they accuse the Spaniards of an unjust war, launched against an innocent but equal, sovereign nation. The war is unjust according to the incipient understanding of international law in this period (Scott 2000, 98). The other strategy is forensic, using the devastating effects of violence as an argument. The dramas describe the possibility of justice or revenge as though it grew directly out of the ‘wounds’. Death is ever present as a threat or a promise of redemption, and trauma and mourning are present in both dramas— especially, in the Tragedia del fin de Atawallpa. However, the aim is not to create empathy with individual suffering. The dramas underline the political collectivity of the victims which creates a stronger claim of justice. Though the events of the dramas are violent, surprisingly, the plays spend a lot of time on anti-dramatic elements, such as repetitive rituals, the difficult interpretation of the events and the miscommunication between the Spaniards and the Indians. In none of the plays is there a coherent narration of the violence, and the victims even deny the possibility of a rational understanding. Since the truth of violent subjugation is difficult to understand, express or accept, both plays explore alternative ways of finding and expressing truth. These alternative ways are theatrical in a post-dramatic sense, as defined by Hans-Thies Lehmann, meaning that they are non-narrative, corporeal, scenic, musical, auditory and visual (Lehmann 2006, 46); (Leiboff 2020, 3). Lehmann calls the anti-narrative mode a retheatricalization of the theater but the aim is not only to highlight the aesthetic dimensions of the theater. As he explains, the retheatricalization is an ‘opening of the theatrical sphere to others: to cultural, political, magical, philosophical, etc. forms of practice, to gathering, feast

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and ritual’ (Lehmann 2006, 51). While Lehmann focuses on modern theater, I argue that the term post-dramatic fits well with the baroque theater since here there is also a great emphasis on the visual, auditory, and corporeal expression, often related to traditions of folkloristic performances, and royal or religious processions that take place outside of the theater (Rennert 1963, 4). One of the most important forms of theatrical expression outside of the theater was the Corpus Christi festival. In the words of José María Díez Borque, this popular festival was the most perfect form of the contemplated festival (‘la fiesta contemplada’), because it heightened its effect through an integration of textual, visual, auditory, ritual and playful elements (Díez Borque 2002, 224). The Corpus Christi festival was spectacular and festive and inspired also secular performances. As Díez Borque says, it generated a rich folklore in Spain and in all of the Spanish territories (‘un rico folklore a lo largo de las tierras de España’) (Díez Borque 2002, 224). The spectacular public processions were enormously popular but they were also important public affirmations of power hierarchies. Spiritual and secular power were demonstrated and interwoven. As argued by Teofilo F. Ruiz: ‘Essentially, no manifestation of state power lacked an ecclesiastical component and vice versa’ (Ruiz 2017, 155). In the public imagination the power of the church and the king was conflated. The king was seen as an incarnation of Divine will and a synthesis was made between his physical body and his symbolic body. As pointed out by David Schauffler, such a synthesis is particularly strong in absolutist societies (Schauffler 2019, 161). The conflation of the King’s two bodies also happens in the plays studied in this chapter. The rulers of both the Incan and the Spanish empires are seen as incarnations of sovereign power. They rule over life and death (McKendrick 2002, 18); (Wachtel 1972, 60), and both empires are supported by relatively rigid social hierarchies—often, demonstrated in symbolic and highly ritualized public processions (Maravall 1986). However, the plays also allow for the carnivalesque dimension of the popular festivals to emerge, and this is essential for the creation of a common ground for human rights. While Mikhail Bakthin claims that the carnival has a strong tradition until the eighteenth century,5 Teofilo F. Ruiz has argued that already in the centuries before, the religious and secular festivals and processions 5  As Bakhtin stresses, the carnival dies out in the eighteenth century when humor is limited to the private sphere, which means that it loses its historical color (Bakhtin 1984, 101).

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outgrew the carnival in importance. As he explains, after the medieval period the carnival feast seemed to wane ‘as a locus for the articulation of social resistance by the powerless’ (Ruiz 2017, 155). Nonetheless he argues, ‘in a deep sense, the Corpus Christi was like carnival’ (Ruiz 2017, 166). The Corpus Christi festival was a mass phenomenon that allowed people to feel a strong sense of community and to not only be spectators but also actors. Despite the highly regulated form of religious and secular processions, there was a democratic and participatory carnivalesque element, which was mainly expressed through the body and which was not tied to logos. According to Mikhail Bakhtin, the carnival creates a temporary suspension of ‘all hierarchical rank, privileges, norms and prohibitions’ (Bakhtin 1984, 10). The dethronement of powerful political characters, such as the king, is a common element, but all participants in a carnival are deprived of social status. Carnival allows everybody to leave their individualized prison and become ‘part of the crowd’ (Bakhtin 1984, 92). Ideally, in the carnival, new ‘purely human relations’ and opportunities for communication and fraternization arise between all people (Bakhtin 1984, 16). The carnival creates a lived experience of equality. Thus, it merges social criticism with a bodily incarnated sense of equality (Bakhtin 1984, 10) and, thereby, creates a real foundation for the universalism of human rights. Solidarity between people is not created through a common idea of humanity; it is created through a collective and bodily anchored sense of community. One could call that an embodied common sense. The theater of the baroque was of course different from religious and royal processions, and different from the carnival, but in its early forms it was inspired by the popularity and the bodily engaging forms of the spectacular parades and festivals. As Erika Fischer-Lichte has argued, in the baroque period, there is a special focus on how the theater can ‘let the bodies speak’ (Fischer-Lichte and Riley 1997, 29) and how it can engage an audience. The theater practically grew out of street life, and was often performed in the street, sometimes integrated in the market square, sometimes in mobile wagons (carros), later in the closed corrales that were open-air-theaters (Rico et al. 1980, Vol. 2, 578–582). Just like the processions, the plays were a highly popular entertainment where the audience responded immediately to the show, and shouted and threw vegetables, etc. on stage if it did not please them (Menéndez Peláez et al. 1995, Vol. 2, 357). In the two plays studied in this chapter, ritualized forms of the spectacular theatricality known from the Corpus Christi tradition are used with

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the aim of demonstrating and exploring both power structures and counterhegemonic resistance. The plays are not theatrical ‘carnivals’ but there are carnivalesque dimensions and both plays are highly occupied with bodily knowledge and how to create a collective and bodily anchored sense of community. In my readings, I will highlight similarities between the dramas to strengthen the understanding of the carnivalesque and ritual forms of an embodied common sense and of claims for justice. But there are also huge differences between the dramas. Though they are both ‘tragedies’, Carvajal’s play is a Spanish auto, written in the form of a danse macabre that, to some degree, conforms to earlier Spanish theatrical forms. Traditionally, the Spanish auto was performed in connection with Christian festivals—especially, the festival of Corpus Christi. On the other hand, Tragedy of Atawallpa’s Death is a so-called wanka that, according to Jesús Lara, is only tragic in content. In its form, it is carnivalesque: It has a ritualistic, repetitive character that creates mirror effects between high and low and between conqueror and conquered. According to Lara, the play draws on pre-Columbian forms of performance. The play is one play among a whole series of popular plays that present the death of Atahualpa. These plays have been performed with dances and music by indigenous communities through the centuries until today (Wachtel 1972, 225; Garcia Pabon 1992). According to Nathan Wachtel, they form part of an indigenous collective psychology (Wachtel 1972, 67). Recently, the purity of the indigenous origin has been disputed. The plays were all created after the Spanish conquest, they are highly influenced by Spanish language and culture and they have most often been performed in public spaces in connection with the celebration of Catholic holidays, often the carnival. More than a reflection only of Indian psychology, the plays about Atahualpa’s death should be understood as a product of a mixed colonial culture. Nevertheless, the plays are performed by Indians and see the defeat to the Spanish from the Indian side. Though different in their use of carnivalesque elements, I shall demonstrate that there is a connection between the carnivalesque form and performance and the character of the collective rights that they defend. Highlighting collectivity and solidarity across ranks as the basis of human rights gives rights a popular and non-liberal dimension.

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Micael de Carvajal: Court of Death Cortes de la muerte (Court of Death) has two authors. Though a majority of studies conclude that the play was written mostly by Micael de Carvajal (a Spanish author who is often overlooked in literary histories or only mentioned for his tragedy Josefina), Luis Hurtado de Toledo put the finishing touches to it and sent the play to King Philip II, as can be seen from the play’s impressive title: Cortes de la Muerte a las cuales vienen todos los Estados, y por vía de representación, dan aviso a los vivientes y doctrina a los oyentes. Llevan gracioso y delicado estilo. Dirigidas por Luis Hurtado de Toledo al invictísimo señor Don Felipe, Rey de España y Inglaterra, etc. (The Court of Death, to Which All Estates Come and by Means of Representatives Warn the Living and Teach the Audience, in an Elegant and Delicate Style. Addressed by Luis Hurtado de Toledo to the Invincible Lord, Don Felipe, King of Spain and England, etc.) (Carvajal 2008, 58–59). Some critics argue that, due to his conservative beliefs, Luis Hurtado is responsible for depicting the final condemnation of the Indians; whereas Carvajal is responsible for the more progressive parts of the play (Gamba Corradine 2013, 393–94).6 Yet, even if passages can be attributed to one or the other of the writers, this dual authorship creates doubt about the intentionality of the work.7 6  Jimena Gamba Corradine has compared Luis Hurtado de Toledo’s rewriting of Micael de Carvajal’s play with his rewriting of Comedia Tibalda by Perálvarez de Ayllón and argues that passages (re)written by Hurtado de Toledo may be recognized by their low style and more salient orthodoxy. She argues that, in Carvajal’s play, Hurtado de Toledo has probably written the last scene, the penultimate scene (scene 22), and scene 18 (almost literally a copy of Francisco de Castilla’s book on the theory of virtues (Teoría de las virtudes) (Gamba Corradine 2013, 393–94). There seems to be agreement that Hurtado de Toledo wrote or rewrote the last scene. 7  This has become even more complicated after it was suggested by Carlos A. Jáuregui that we are not sure who Micael de Carvajal was since there were two persons, both from Plasencia, with that name: the ‘buoyant and insolvent Miguel de Carvajal (1500?–ca. 1575)’ and ‘the other Miguel de Carvajal, born between 1490 and 1510, the fortunate heir of a family of means, who is known to have been in Santo Domingo in 1534’ (Jáuregui 2008a, 9). This second Miguel de Carvajal would have had a chance to ‘see firsthand the devastation of the indigenous population in Santo Domingo’ (Jáuregui 2008a, 14). But it is difficult to decide which Carvajal was the author.

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The literary originality of the work has also been cast into doubt since it was demonstrated how Carvajal borrows ideas or whole passages from previous writers such as Erasmus (Caro López 1999, 451), Francisco Castilla (Gamba Corradine 2013, 393–94), Fray Fernán Pérez de Guzmán, Jorge Manrique and especially Fray Iñigo de Mendoza (Rodriguez-­ Puertolas 1968, 103–110). Many readings focus on the difficulty of establishing authorship; other readings discuss whether this play by Carvajal/ Hurtado de Toledo is the one mentioned by Don Quixote in the second part of the novel by Cervantes or whether Cervantes here refers to a later play with the same title, written by Lope de Vega (Mata Induráin 2016, 119–31).8 Some readings have stressed the connection to a number of later works about the conquest by Quevedo, Góngora, Cervantes and Lope de Vega (Caro López 1998, 453). Except for a few notable exceptions, little attention has been devoted to the genre and topic of the text. Before Cortes de la Muerte, Carvajal/Hurtado de Toledo had published another work: Cortes de casto amor (Court of Virtuous Love). The two plays are linked and could even be seen as one work. In the introduction to Cortes de la Muerte, Luis Hurtado de Toledo explains that he is publishing this work because he is afraid that the publication of Cortes de casto amor has given the public the impression that he is a frivolous man. Hurtado is afraid of what he terms the ‘common public, examiner of strange cases’ (‘el vulgo, público examinador de ajenas causas’).9 It is interesting that Hurtado describes the public as an ‘examiner of strange cases’. Thus, even in this early period of the Baroque, there is an idea of the common audience as a judge whose opinion has to be respected. Though published in 1557, some critics believe that Micael de Carvajal’s play Cortes de la muerte was written in the early 1550s (1552–1553), just after the Valladolid debate between Bartolomé de Las Casas and Ginés de Sepúlveda (Pérez-Amador Adam 2011, 319). The play is clearly inspired by Las Casas’ denouncement of violence in America, and his arguments for the Indians’ human and political rights. In some passages, the wording comes close to Las Casas’ vocabulary and his way of phrasing accusations. Carlos A.  Jáurequi, who has written a very useful introduction to the English translation of scene 19, even calls it a ‘theatrical rewriting of Las 8  The most common assumption now is that Cervantes refers to Lope de Vega’s work and not Carvajal (Mades 1968; Mata Induráin 2016). 9  The English translation by Smith-Soto/Jáuregui says ‘commoners examining matters that are beyond them’ (Carvajal 2008, 59–60).

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Casas’ (Jáuregui 2008a, 37). It ‘presents a Lascasian defense of the Indians and a fervent accusation against the conquerors and encomenderos’ (Jáuregui 2008a, 47); but, as he argues, it is only Lascasian at the beginning. In the end, Las Casas ‘becomes a specter of himself as his discourse is conjured up and translated into the ideology of empire’ (Jáuregui 2008a, 49). In this chapter, I argue that, though the play ends by defending the Spanish conquest and even blames the Indians for the Spanish violence, this does not mean that the effect of the play is also anti-Lascasian. The fact that the Indians do not obtain justice may, in fact, strengthen their claim in the eyes of the audience. The play urges the audience to act as a judge not only of the Indians’ case but of the justice of the whole court. Moreover, the court is depicted as a highly ambiguous institution. There seems to be a contradiction between its religious and secular dimensions, and its procedures and structure are complicated to the point of being bewildering. Finally, the humoristic and carnivalesque style of the play serves to undermine the status of the court. I focus first on the complaint of the Indians and their forensic claims and, then, on the play’s carnivalesque traits. I shall argue that Carvajal uses the carnivalistic, humoristic and egalitarian traits inherent in the traditional danse macabre in a modern way to criticize the corruption of both religious and secular power. The Indians may lose the battle of the trial, but they might not lose the whole war.

Forensic Theatricality and the Indians’ Complaints In the Court of Death, every estate in society comes to complain or ask for justice, revenge or a longer life. None of the complainants are successful in their petitions. They are all awarded death by the judge of the court. The judge is female, the skeletal appearance of Death, addressed by the complainants as ‘Señora’. As mentioned previously, in scene 19, Micael de Carvajal is clearly inspired by Bartolomé de las Casas, and he has the Indians complain about the same abuses that were denounced by Las Casas in A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies (1542/1552): that is, the brutality of the Spanish, their greed, their warfare beyond any law, their un-Christian behavior, and their unjustified enslavement of the Indians. In a particularly bitter comment, they protest that they have been treated worse by the Spanish conquerors after they converted to Christianity than they were

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before.10 The theatrical setting of Cortes de la muerte creates a forum that, in Las Casas’ case, is external to the text. In Carvajal, the Indians get to speak ‘for themselves’ in a dramatized form. Therefore, it can be argued that, despite its hierarchical power structure, the forum is political and democratic (Deanda-Camacho 2015, 157). In contrast with the Moors and the Jews in the play, the Indians even speak in a flawless Spanish with no dialect (Varela 2004, 339). The Indians step forward as victims and witnesses, and as such you would expect that they would begin by explaining who they are and what they have experienced. However, they start their accusatory speech by saying: ‘Naturally, you must know….’, and: ‘As you must have seen and heard…’. Instead of telling the story of the abuse, the Indians argue enthymenically—that is, they use the rhetorical device of treating the abuse as if it is already known and proven. In a way, this makes historical sense since Las Casas’ book A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, circulated beginning in 1542 and published in 1552, had become immensely popular. The debates around the Valladolid trial from 1550 were also well known. As Carlos A. Jáuregui argues, scene 19 reads as a ‘condensed compendium of the debates of the day about the justification of the conquest’ (Jáuregui 2008a, 2). The Indians rehearse some of the arguments, but they do not make the arguments themselves. The echo of Las Casas gives them a kind of political authority and a rhetorical platform. They do not completely speak as foreign ‘subalterns’. When it comes to the crimes and atrocities themselves, the Indians do not really describe them. They only list them: ¿Qué campos no están regados Con la sangre, que a Dios clama, De nuestros padres honrados, Hijos, hermanos, criados Por robar hacienda y fama? ¿Qué hija, mujer, ni hermana Tenemos que no haya sido Mas que pública mundane Por esta gente Tirana Que todo lo ha corrompido? 10  According to David Gitlitz, Carvajal was a Jew who had been forced to convert to Christianity (Castillo 2005, 83). This might have made it easier for him to identify with the Indians’ bitter feelings.

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Para sacar los anillos ¿Qué dedos no se cortaron? ¿Qué orejas para zarcillos No rompieron con cuchillos? ¿Que brazos no destrozaron? ¿Qué vientres no traspasaron Las espadas con gran lloro? (Carvajal 2008, 74,76). (What fields have now not been fed With blood crying up to God, Spilled from our honest parents Our sons, our servants, our brothers, Protecting their homes and their honor? What daughter, sister or wife Have we been able to guard From being used like a whore By these vile and ruthless tyrants Who corrupt all that they touch? To snatch away gold rings What fingers did they not sever? What ears did their knives not slash For the sake of golden earrings? What arms did they not break? What wombs, amid cries of woe, Did they not pierce with their swords?) (Carvajal 2008, 75,77)

The list focuses on concrete details: ears and fingers cut off, blood running from wounds. The atrocities are, thus, represented through synecdoche: The cut-off finger represents the mass destruction of the Americas; the blood of murdered individuals speaks metaphorically on behalf of whole families and, by inference, the whole victimized Indian community. The blood itself speaks. This literary technique is defined by Quintilian and called prosopopeia. It attributes voice to inanimate things (Weizman 2010, 64). By using this device, the Indians evoke dead or distant victims and put an invisible reality before the public eye. The insistence on the specificity of the atrocities points to the bodily presence of the victims. The Indians list the ears and fingers that have been cut off as if they were literally laying these items on the table as material evidence that speaks for itself about the crimes of the Spanish. Severed fingers equal proof. If it had been possible, they would have presented a

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photograph of the severed fingers. Since this was not possible, they simply list them. The almost neutral form of the list implies a documentarist intention. There is no narration. How the massacres began and developed, or they ended or continued is not described. The Indians reject the semi-rational rhetorical form of narration. Instead, they just present a list of crimes, implying we are in the midst of unstoppable calamities beyond reason. It is formed as a series of rhetorical questions: What fingers did they not sever? What ears did their knives not slash? And so on. A rhetorical question is not a real question. It assumes that the answer is self-evident. The Indians are not neutral expert witnesses; they constitute an interested party, the accuser. But they choose to mimic the evidentiary style of a forensic expert to give their argument weight. In this way, they connect forensics and human rights. When they present the severed body parts, they do not only say: ‘the Spanish did this’ but that ‘they did not have the right to do it’. It was not a just warfare, nor did the Spanish only come to preach Christianity as they allegedly said they would. Just as we saw in Las Casas, there is a direct link between presenting the ‘atrocities’ and claiming the rights of the Indians. However, the Indians do this much more humbly and ironically than Las Casas. After having listed the atrocities, the Indians refuse to tell more since the actions of the Spanish are so mad that they cannot be narrated: Huye pues, entendimiento, Por no contar más maldades Que de aquesta gente siento (Carvajal 2008, 92) (Reason, don’t linger longer, Don’t make me recount all the evils I have seen coming from these people) (Carvajal 2008, 93)

Listing the crimes and then refusing to say more is an unusual defense posture. The reticence to speak is a sign of the atrocious character of the crimes and the immensity of the suffering, but it may also be seen as resistance to the public disclosure of pain that ‘repeats’ and exposes it to the involuntary voyeurism of the audience in the court. The verbal repetition risks repeating the madness. Since the Indians deny reason’s capacity to grasp the atrocities, reason is sent away, leaving the Indians in a strange situation since, without reason, they begin to doubt their own capacity for understanding. After listing all the cruelties that the perverse, sick and greedy conquerors have committed, they say:

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¡Ay! Que no vemos, cuitados, Como andamos con candiles, Que allá somos tan malvados, Que por los nuestros pecados Vienen estos alguaciles (Carvajal 2008, 98). (Oh, we unfortunate ones Must be just too blind to see What evildoers we are, That our dark crimes should bring These lawmen down on our heads.) (Carvajal 2008, 99)

The Indians may be in the dark; but, as the ironic tone hints, it is actually the Spanish lawmen who cannot see. The Spaniards are perpetrators whose wickedness has blocked their access to both reason and the senses. When truth is determined by power, a confusion of the bodily and cognitive senses arises, which again leads to a confusion in their moral sense of right and wrong. In order to see truth, therefore, you must adjust your sight. Before this scene, the Indians have already wondered why Ptolemy, the scientist, could not see America; whereas the greedy Spanish conquerors found it as if science were blind and greed were the true looking glass. It is an historical irony, but the irony also includes the contemporary Spaniards. Their sight is corrupted: they see gold but not the cruelty of their acts. This ironic passage is didactic: It serves as an invitation for Death and the audience to change or adjust their glasses, so that they see the truth of the Spanish crimes. The Indians end their speech by saying: Pues solo resta saber si en estas Cortes tan dignas se pudiese proveer cómo quitar el poder destas gentes y rapinas. (Carvajal 2008, 100) (It only remains to be seen if by this honorable court A judgment could somehow be found To wrest away the control from these human beasts of prey) (Carvajal 2008, 101).

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The Indians invite the court to demonstrate justice, so that it can be seen by all. And Death immediately answers by saying: ‘Oh, how very right you are/My brothers, to complain/of this sorrow you are suffering/ Since you so little deserve it’ (Carvajal 2008, 101) (‘¡Oh, cuánta razón tenéis/de quexaros, mis hermanos/dese mal que padecéis/ porque no lo merecéis’ (Carvajal 2008, 100)). Death has adjusted her glasses and sees the crimes that are put before her in the same way as the Indians do: as vile and unjust offenses committed against innocent human beings. Then comes the surprising twist in the trial: Though Death acknowledges that the Spanish are “pestilent” perpetrators, she will do nothing to correct the situation or punish the Spanish conquerors—at least, not in this life. She claims it is the normal state of the world to be full of scandals and wars: Mas sabé ques necesario venga escándalos y guerras, y tiempo adverso y contrario mas ¡ay del triste adversario por quien vienen en las tierras!” (Carvajal 2008, 102) (But bear in mind that the way Is strewn with scandals and wars And times of travail and trouble But woe unto the enemy By whom the offenses come!) (Carvajal 2008, 103).

She recommends patience since, in the world hereafter, the Indians will be rewarded (if they remain good Christians) and the Spanish conquerors will be punished. This verdict might be in accordance with the kind of judgment you normally get in a religious danse macabre; but, in light of the enormity of the actual crimes that have been exposed, Death’s failure to rule against the Spaniards seems offensive. Insult is added to injury when the saints back up Death by saying that there is no medicine to cure greed (Saint Dominic), that it is a pity America has gold (Saint Francis), and that the Americans themselves revealed it to the Spanish. The Indians are even accused of luring the Spanish to America. According to Saint Dominic, the Indies is an ‘abyss of sinfulness’ that is ‘wealthy with evil’ (Carvajal 2008, 111). These holy men are backed up by Satan, Flesh and World, all of whom hail America for her wealth, carefree liberty and earthly pleasure. The Indians may be good Christians, but

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America as such is the source of evil. As Saint Dominic says: The Indies ‘hold wide open/the very jaws of damnation’ (Carvajal 2008, 111) (‘¡Indias, que tienes abiertas/las gargantas infernales!’ (Carvajal 2008, 110)). It is remarkable that, in this holy Court of Death, Satan, World and Flesh, who are described as opponents to the court (contraditores), get the last word in the trial. Death does not return to add anything to or correct this picture of America as a frivolous place of earthly pleasures, an image that implies that America is guilty of her own destruction. This gendered depiction of America as a dangerous temptress and the Spanish conquerors as victims is an early example that will be repeated throughout colonial history. The image has comic echoes, but it is a bitter comedy turned against the Indians. In the play, acknowledgment of the crimes against the Indians develops into an accusation of the Indians. The victims are turned into perpetrators, and justice is put off to the afterlife. As Jáuregui correctly says, scene 19 moves from being Lascasian to being anti-Lascasian and ends with a colonialist finale (Jáuregui 2008a, 41). It is clearly a scene that shows the defeat of the Indians. However, the Indians may lose their case in the Court of Death, but there are three ways in which the explicitly negative conclusion of scene 19 is transformed into a positive one. First, the fact that the explicit plot of scene 19 ends with anti-Lascasian tragedy does not mean that the scene or the play has an anti-Lascasian effect. The play depicts an unfair system of justice, a system in which the presiding judge admits that an abuse has occurred but omits correction and punishment. This must make the audience reflect on and even be skeptical of the general justice of the court system. Second, the persuasive rationality of the Indians has an effect on the audience. Throughout the entire trial, they have demonstrated their dignity and rationality. They have coherently argued that they are peaceful, rational beings, newly converted to Christianity, and that the Spanish conquerors have abused and enslaved them, waging war against them only to enrich themselves. According to Ortega y Medina, they have thereby demonstrated that they are not natural slaves (‘siervos a natura’) (Ortega y Medina 1955, 497). Since one of the arguments for the enslavement of the American Indians, put forward by the Aristotelian scholar Ginés de Sepúlveda, was that the Indians were not capable of reason and, therefore, could be enslaved (see Chap. 2), the very rationality of the Indians in Carvajal’s play proves the opposite point. Even though they lose their case

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in court, they have won the argument against their enslavement. Third, the Indians only lose if one focuses on the explicit, exoteric content of the play. If we focus on the ambiguity of the court and the carnivalesque traits of the danse macabre, an opposite reading may be sustained.

A Religious or a Secular Court: Hierarchy or Equality? The Court of Death is a religious auto. The Spanish auto was a dramatic, allegorical play written to exalt and demonstrate one or more religious dogmas—most often, the Eucharistic transubstantiation (‘la transubstanciación eucarística’) (Arellano 2002, 19). As can be seen from the title, it is an explicitly didactic play written to ‘Warn the Living and Teach the Audience’. Historically, the auto was related to the Festival of Corpus Christi, which was inaugurated in the Middle Ages by Pope Urban IV (in 1264) and later expanded into dogmatic but folkloristic Corpus Christi processions by Clement V and John XXII (Arellano 2002, 19). The genre, thus, has a liturgical origin, a remnant of which may be detected in the auto’s performative gestures, which are meant to underline the dogmatic, didactic content. The performative dimension in the written manuscript of Cortes de la muerte is underlined by the fact that the auto is structured as a danse macabre or dance of death. The dance is a performance that includes everyone: high and low, rich and poor. Ideally, every class of society is represented, so the audience will be able to identify with one or the other and be more affected by the moral message of the play. The danse macabre is, thus, performative in two ways: the dance in itself is a performance, and the dance has the potential of having a performative effect on the audience. Danse macabre is a genre that literally lets the bones speak. One could say that it is generically forensic but in an ironic way since it is focused on the death to come. The ‘justice’ it can offer is ‘death to all’. In Carvajal’s play, not much is said about reward or punishment after death. Death mentions briefly that a ‘heavenly Jerusalem’ is waiting (for the good people); but, except for this brief mention, the hereafter does not play any significant role. Dying itself is the whole point, and the sooner the better. Already in the introduction, it is announced that, by divine mandate, Death is creating a trial to shorten the way to death for many who thought their road was long (‘la muerte viene a hazer/ cortes y a

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acortar camino/ a muchos que piensan ser/ larga su estrella y su sino’ (Carvajal 1964, 178)). Or as it is announced by the hermit at the beginning of the play: ‘Understand, all you mortals, that death is near’ (‘Entienda todo mortal/que tiene cerca la muerte’) (Carvajal 1964, 178).11 The skeletal bones of death bear witness to death itself. Though this message does not seem to invite a long drama, Carvajal turns it into a veritable spectacle. He draws on the medieval tradition of the danse macabre, but he also modernizes it in the sense that he moves it away from the purely religious content and makes the secular and social dimensions more salient and the temporal dimension more dynamic. Compared to the traditional hierarchical order of the medieval danse macabre, the order of Carvajal’s play is much more random, and there are many more people and classes represented than in any other medieval or contemporary play (Ortega y Medina 1955, 480–81). In the traditional danse macabre, there is a strict hierarchical order of appearance which alternates between religious and civil figures in descending ranks: pope, emperor, cardinal, king, patriarch, duke, archbishop, field marshal, bishop, knight, squire, dean, merchant, archdeacon, lawyer, ecclesiastic judge, physician, priest, worker, monk, moneylender, etc. down to verger (Ortega y Medina 1955, 480); (Gamba Corradine 2013, 383). In Carvajal’s play, this systematic, and hierarchical alternation between secular and religious figures is dissolved; the number of religious figures is much reduced. Only four of a total of 33 figures are religious. There is one bishop, who appears at the beginning and the end, two monks, and one nun but no pope, no archbishop, no dean, no archdeacon. The bishop represents the entire ecclesiastic class, including the Pope. The list of figures appearing before the court in Cortes de la muerte is in order of appearance: bishop, pastor with sheep, knight (caballero), rich man, thieves (Milón and Brocano), monks (Brother Remigio and Brother Macario), men of poverty (Perico and Juan), nun, married man, widow, judge, lettered man, medical doctor, worker, pimps (Durandarte and Pie de Hierro), prostitute (Beatriz), Heraclito (a sad philosopher), Democrito (a happy philosopher), Indians (an Indian cacique and other Indians (scene 19), Jews (Don Moysen, Don Farón, Don Micén), Moors (Jarique, Arfaraz), a Christian Portuguese man (Vasco Figueyra), Old Age, Youth, Guilt, the author and a bishop. 11  My translation. All translations to English from this play are my own except passages from scene 19.

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The order of this list does not demonstrate a clear social hierarchy or symmetrical balancing of secular and religious estates. The random order of appearance and the mixed character of the represented estates create equality. Generic figures are mixed with named individuals. The Jews, the Moors and the Portuguese are represented by named individuals; whereas the American natives are represented by generic figures: An Indian cacique and ‘other Indians’. Social classes (judge, medical doctor, pastor, worker and prostitute) are interchanged with allegorical figures (Youth, Old Age and Guilt). It is significant that there is an interest in cultural and political contexts. Traditional danse macabres typically included a Jew and a Moor—primarily, to represent heresy. In Carvajal’s play, they are represented as cultural and political ‘others’, and they are ‘joined by’ native Americans and a Portuguese man. To some degree, there is an interest in the secular world of geopolitics. The apparent randomness in the order of appearance and the dominant secular content give Carvajal’s danse macabre a markedly modern profile. Though the court of death is clearly a religious court, it is also historical and political. The play is dedicated to Philip II, and the court is presumably located in Spain. The Indians have traveled far to come to the court. Furthermore, it can be argued that, given the secular character of the danse macabre, the court is also the court of the Spanish empire (Jáuregui 2008a, 106); (Deanda-Camacho 2015, 157). Death herself is described as a ‘great monarchical emperor’ (‘gran monarca emperadora’) (Carvajal 1964, 183). Thus, when the Indians come to complain, they do it in front of both the ultimate religious judge and the secular, political sovereign of the empire. Though a synthesis of secular and religious power was not uncommon in early modern Spain (Ruiz 2017, 155), the Janus-like character of the court adds ambiguity to the moral message of the play. So, it would be interesting to have a closer look at the construction of power at the court. The court is named Court of Death, and is presided over by Death (la ‘Señora’). She stresses that she acts on behalf of God since only God has the sovereign power to prolong or shorten life.12 She calls herself a ‘messenger’ and makes rulings in the court according to predetermined ‘rigorous laws’ (‘rigurosas leyes’) (Carvajal 1964, 183). Deanda-Camacho even calls her an advocate for God (Deanda-Camacho 2015, 157). But God, 12  ‘Ansi que no es en mi mano/alargar ni acortar vidas/sino solo el soberano/es el que tarde o temprano/las quita o las da cumplidas’ (Carvajal 1964, 193).

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the sovereign, is not represented in the play. He is an invisible power center beyond the court. Thus, while the court invites people to face the ultimate judgment, it simultaneously hides its real, powerful center. The visitors to the court do not see the ultimate judge, only his representatives. And, of them, there seems to be a bewildering multitude. Contrary to what might be expected and to what Death says, the court system is not a simple machine implementing sovereign power; it is a complex forum with a large number of agents whose role is not always clear. If not Kafkaesque, the court’s system and procedure are at least confusing. Death is helped by her good friends (Pain, Old Age and Time), the hosts (aposentadores) (Fear, Sorrow and Terror), and various court assistants, interlocutors, assessors and messenger boys. These figures comment in different ways on justice, on the errors of human beings, and procedural matters. Since the court structure mimics a legal court of justice, there are prosecutors and defense attorneys. They are integrated into a religious and Manichean system of morality. On the one hand, we have the ‘defense lawyers’—the holy men: Saint Jerónimo, Saint Francis, Saint Dominic (all founders of important monastic orders), Saint Agustín and two angels, who say that they will guard people and defend them from dangers and suffering induced by their unlucky actions and also protect them from Satan, Flesh and World.13 On the other hand, we have the ‘prosecutors’ accusing culpable mortals of specific sins and crimes: namely Satan, Flesh and World. They are described as ‘opponents’ (contraditores) who have come ‘to fight against the attorneys for the defense’ (procuradores). Satan appears with Luther, who is now his secretary and who is described as a traitor and defiler of evangelical law. The system seems to be adversarial, but the court is not what it seems. Not all figures appear in all scenes, and not always do they play a simple role. For instance, the angels do not only defend the complainants, they are also the defenders of the House of Death against the Prince of the abysmal depths, meaning that the angels defend the court system itself in the larger battle between Heaven and Hell. The ‘prosecutors’ are not only 13  Angel: ‘Que somos los que tenemos/cargo de guardar las gentes/y los que los defendemos/de los peligros y estremos/que causan sus acidentes/ Porque es grande el Amistad/que al hombre tenemos nos’ and ‘Nos venimos a guardallos/del diablo, carne y mundo’ (Carvajal 1964, 182).

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opponents of the complainants but the whole court system. In fact, they do not really prosecute mortals. Instead, they celebrate their sinfulness and their eagerness to cling to worldly life. Though Satan wonders about the intelligence of human beings, he is happy that they keep sinning and, thus, filling up his underworld. On the other hand, it also turns out that the ‘attorneys for the defense’ do not defend the sinners but blame them for their sins and crimes. So, there is an ironic contradiction between the moral/religious and the legal dimensions of the court system. Sometimes, the ‘defense’ and the ‘prosecution’ seem more interested in dialogue between themselves than in dialogue with the complainants. Overall, the foundation of the court is so ambiguous and the structure so complicated that the estates may feel that they are inside a nesting doll with many layers and agents rather than a clearly defined court system. Of course, justice is also curtailed by the fact that only one outcome of the ‘trial’ is possible, namely death. Despite the presence of saints and angels, nothing can mitigate that ultimate judgment. It is a sinister court and all the allegorical figures helping Death are negative: Pain, Old Age, Time, Fear, Sorrow and Terror. Mercy and pity are not represented. Death thinks of herself as being very merciful simply because she is extracting people from life, which is described as a fog (neblura) and as Babylon (Babilonia) (Carvajal 1964, 184). But that is ironic. It is also ironic that World is listed as an opponent even though most of the people who appear before Death want to cling to the world—indeed, the only exceptions are the Indians and the poor. It is a sinister court but it is also deeply comic and carnivalesque.

Danse Macabre and Carnivalesque Irony: An Anti-­Christian and Anti-Imperial Play? According to Elena Deanda-Camacho, the medieval danse macabre served as a memento mori; it reminded the audience of the carpe diem principle and instigated a contemptus mundi (Deanda-Camacho 2015, 159). These elements are all present in Carvajal’s play and evoke an egalitarian dimension. In its most basic form, the danse macabre is deeply associated with the structural and folkloristic traits associated with carnival. In his book on Rabelais and His World, Mikhail Bakhtin distinguishes among three forms of folk culture: (1) ritual spectacles (carnival pageants, comic shows of the marketplace); (2) comic verbal compositions (parodies both oral and

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written); (3) various genres of billingsgate (curses, oaths, popular blazons) (Bakhtin 1984, 5). Aspects of all three forms are present in Carvajal’s play. The ritual form of the spectacle is salient in the inherited medieval form of the dance macabre. Like the carnivalesque processions in the medieval period, it has a formalized rhythm incorporated into its composition. The estates proceed in a specified order. Trumpets sound at each new arrival. The Court of Death takes place every year at the same time (Carvajal 1964, 184). It must be a recurring event since people tend to forget death and need to be reminded of it. Generically, the danse macabre has a festive mood; and, in Carvajal’s play, this is audible: In the sound of the trumpets, in the multiple songs, and in the light tone of conversation among the representatives of the court. The play is humoristic in its depiction of people’s earthly concerns and the dethronement of people in power, in its use of everyday language, and in its use of rhymes, which underlines the ironic or comical content such as when Carvajal lets the ‘cortes triunfales’ (the triumphant court) rhyme with ‘males’ (evil/bad) (Carvajal 2008, 64). It is a game in the liminal space of life and death.14 Yet, the play is never a pure carnival but, rather, an ironic carnival. It invokes the carnival and its liberating utopia; it then revokes it as a realistic possibility. Through its clash of idealism and realism, the play becomes ironic. And this is one of the reasons the play appeals more to critical reflection than to emotional engagement. It is sensuously appealing or shocking, but the shock of death is meant to make the audience think. Or, to phrase it differently, the theatrical form of the danse macabre allows for a sensuous exploration of rationality. Just as the forensic ‘report’ by the Indians attempts to find a way to let the mutilated body speak in the court, the carnival investigates truth’s material dimensions. As it turns out, this form of ironic, carnivalesque rationality is especially relevant in a court that is clearly bent toward injustice. The similarity between the carnival and the danse macabre is that both of these cultural and artistic forms transform tragedy into a source of laughter. The festivity of the danse macabre may be seen, for example, in Michael Wolgemut’s classical depiction of The Dance of Death from 1493 (Fig. 4.1): In Wolgemut’s version of the danse macabre, the gruesome drama is given a sense of playfulness and comedy. Life and death are brought 14  The work is written in octosyllabic quintillas; each stanza has ten lines with a varying rhyme scheme, most often ababa/cdcdc or abaab/cdccd.

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Fig. 4.1  Michael Wolgemut The Dance of Death (1493), in the Nuremberg Chronicle of Hartmann Schedel. Public domain

together, and the individual tragedy of death is shown to be an illusion. We do not laugh despite the fact that we are going to die. We laugh because we know we are going to die, and we can do nothing about it. Death turns us all into rotting and decaying bodies and, ultimately, into skeletons. In the carnival and the danse macabre, we play with and investigate the carnality of our own destruction: How do we look as dying cadavers or speaking/dancing skeletons? What is it like literally to face death? It is a form of material existentialism, but it is a social, and festive existentialism that makes it possible for people to face their worst fears: death and social oppression. Bakhtin calls the carnival ‘a victory over the mystic terror of God’ (Bakhtin 1984, 91). The collective and public character of the carnival possesses a truly miraculous, transformative power. This spirit of collectivity is an overlooked positive aspect of the danse macabre. The individual participates in the dance of death as a member of a social class (the estate), and as a member of the universal community of human beings. In the carnival, we experience a real egalitarian social order that

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has the utopian potential of becoming real historical reality. As mentioned previously, we experience a collective foundation of human rights: our sense of universal community. This community is not based on a universal identity or ideal of humanity nor on any negotiation of cultural or political identity. It comes to life as an embodied or incarnated common sense (sensus communis). The carnivalesque dimension of Cortes de la muerte is inherent in its genre as a danse macabre. Despite the hierarchical construction of the court, the carnivalesque mode is structurally present in every scene of the play, and it is underlined by the general humoristic tone that sometimes seems to undermine the dogmatic Christian morality of the play. Right from the beginning of Cortes de la muerte, the play is characterized by humor. It becomes clear when World welcomes Satan as a good friend, whom he is sorry not to have seen for a long time (‘Satanas mi buen amigo/Gran tiempo ha que no te vi’ (Carvajal 1964, 186)). Like it was an everyday encounter, Satan apologizes and explains that he has been too busy. Flesh is impressed by the sight of Luther, who is together with Satan as his secretary, and he calls Luther ‘beautiful anti-Christ’ (‘hermoso ante Christo’ (Carvajal 1964, 187). Though Luther is harshly condemned for being ‘the source of heresy’ (‘fuente de herejía’ (Carvajal 1964, 187)), the audience is allowed to see his beauty and laugh when Flesh praises him for letting priests engage in marital intercourse. The laughter confirms the anti-Protestant didactic aim, but the tone of the scene is playful. Though it is literally a court of death and everybody should be sorrowful, Flesh and World are only sad because the huge number of people flocking to the court will mean a long and tiresome workday for them. To make them happy (‘regozijados’), Satan invites Flesh and World to sing a song. They should, he says, sing a song with ‘requebrados’, meaning they should flatter him. They sing: Si hay alguno en esta vida A quien quiera mas que a vos Mal me lo demande Dios. (Carvajal 1964, 188) (That there should be anyone in this life Whom I admire more than you Even God would not be able to demand that of me.)

Satan poses as a vain woman who wants to get praise from her male admirers, and they respond by saying that not even God could demand

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that they admire anyone more than they admire Satan. The tone is almost erotically playful. The allegorical figures of the court incarnate power, but they do not appear as majestic, solemn demigods but almost as all-too-­ human figures who joke, get bored and are ruled by self-interest. The humor is mainly connected with the negative figures of Satan, Flesh, and World, but there is also a friendly dialogue between Death and the representatives of ‘evil’. Already from the start, the audience might be amused by or a bit skeptical of this court. Essential to the egalitarian carnival is the dethronement of powerful men, and this is a theme throughout the play. Let me just give one example: The first complainant to appear in the court is the bishop. It is significant that he is the first. He represents the whole ecclesiastic class including the pope, the highest level of religious power, and he is depicted as a corrupt and ridiculously vain man. Death is shocked to see him arrive adorned with rich garments, jewelry, and pearls, which is a mockery of the court (Carvajal 1964, 190). The Spanish word used is ‘burla’, which refers to the burlesque tradition. She says: Parece venis haziendo Burla del hábito ahora Dezid no os avergonzays De parecer ante mi Hecho monstruo, como andays Y por ventura rezays Con ese trage y ansi (Carvajal 1964, 190). (It seems you come now Making fun of custom Tell me, are you not ashamed Of coming here before me Turned into a monster, the way you appear. And maybe you even say your prayers In such a dress)

And she goes on to say that not even from India has a ‘parrot so colorfully decorated’ arrived (‘Eclesiástico vestido/Tan apunto repicado/ Papagayo tan pintado/De la India no ha venido’ (Carvajal 1964, 190)). In this ironic passage, Death mocks the bishop for his vanity through an orientalization, hinting that he is even more bound by earthly pleasures than distant pagans from India. Though the bishop assures Death of the

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honesty and good deeds of all the priests, monks and bishops, the impression remains of a deeply corrupted or decadent ecclesiastic class.15 In this one scene, Carvajal erodes the power of the Church and denounces its hypocrisy. Here, irony and humor serve a critical egalitarian purpose that situates the most powerful religious figures at the level of pagans and almost at the level of animals. The Spanish word used for the flock of ecclesiastics is ganado, which also means cattle. The final verdict of Death is pure mockery when she turns the word perlado (literally, ‘pearly’) against the bishop. He has used the word in a metaphorical sense about the distinction of Christian patriarchs. Death uses the same word against the bishop to describe his arrogant adornments (Carvajal 1964, 190). Death and Satan agree that the bishop’s defense is ‘false and wrought’ (‘fingido y forjado’ (Carvajal 1964, 195)). It is essential that the first class to be presented is the ecclesiastic and that it is completely ridiculed and dismissed by the court. The scene is constructed to teach and to amuse. The clash between the idealism of Christianity and the crude realism and hypocrisy of the Church provides some of the comic effect of the scene. This scene illustrates the first point on Bakhtin’s list of carnivalesque traits, the equalizing force of carnival and the comic dethronement of people in power. In the following scenes, all the classes appear—including the lowest classes. Significantly, the poor are presented in a completely different light from the bishops. The poor people beg for death to come as soon as possible since they see death as the only cure for their miserable life. They suffer from hunger and complain that nobody will help them. They are promised heavenly consolation and a glorious reception by the Virgin Mary and all the saints in the hereafter. So, the egalitarian logic of the play does not only dethrone the powerful, it also lifts the powerless to the highest level in the sense that they are celebrated in heaven. They will certainly be rewarded. However, it is a deadly irony that they have to die to be saved. Death exhorts that they have to bear their burdens with a smile while they live, even enjoy their poverty as a ‘holy’ gift from God (‘sancta pobreza’ (Carvajal 1964, 216)). To forget their sorrows, the poor sing 15  Criticism of the ecclesiastics was not entirely uncommon in the medieval danse macabre, but it has an emphatic form in this drama. The vocabulary of money infects all the talk of the bishop, as when he complains that the ecclesiastics will not have time to enjoy all their ‘profits’: ‘Dizen (the ecclesiastics) que no han comenzado/A gozar rentas que ruedan/Quando en breve punto y grado/Ya los has arrebatado’ (Carvajal 1964, 192).

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villancicos, a type of song that was extremely popular in Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It was often sung in connection with religious ceremonies but had a prosaic and comic content. Villancicos have been called ‘sacred songs in the vernacular’, ‘with a clear dance ancestry’, and with a secular origin (Knighton and Torrente 2007, 1,2).16 To incorporate the festive and popular villancico into this danse macabre is surely a carnivalesque element. The poor man claims that, if Death promises to end their days, they will hold a grand fiesta to celebrate (‘…hacer grandes fiestas/si tu muerte manifiestas/que vas acabar sus días’ (Carvajal 1964, 219)). Comedy and festivities are constant elements. They are meant to support religious dogmatism and imperial power, but there is always a risk that they undermine that power. The question is how the carnivalesque dimensions affect scene 19. In this scene, there is a ‘dethronement’ of the Spanish conquerors that almost equals the dethronement in scene 4 of the bishop. After having watched the 18 scenes that went before, the audience would surely be ready for it.17 To prepare for the dethronement, the Indians describe the Spanish conquerors as giants, indicating that they see them as powerful, just as we saw that the Spanish conquerors who tortured the Indians in the engravings by Théodore de Bry were depicted as larger than their victims (see Chap. 3).18 Soon thereafter, they are likened to slow and stupid Galapagos turtles, who stack gold on their backs and think they can take it with them to heaven. They are called ‘people on the ground’ and are criticized for holding a feast to honor gold: ¿Piensa esta gente en el suelo que del oro hace fiestas, que ha de ir con la carga a cuestas como galápago al cielo? (Carvajal 2008, 82).

16  According to Pepe Rey, prohibitions on villancicos and popular entertainment are ‘less frequent, detailed and emphatic’ throughout the sixteenth century. There is an openness to popular forms of music, especially after the Counter-Reformation (Rey 2007, 19). 17  We are not sure the play was ever performed. Maybe it was too long, maybe independent scenes were performed separately (Jáuregui 2008a, 3–4). 18  Calling them giants also invokes the Corpus Christi festival and the carnival in which grotesque-looking giants were literally carried through the streets.

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(Do these revelers really think, As they pile gold on their backs, That like Galapagos turtles They can lug it to heaven with them? (Carvajal 2008, 83))

The animalization is a dethronement that casts a humoristic light over the Spanish. The clash between idealism and realism is again dramatized, and the Spanish thirst for gold is shown to be a monstrous desire that turns men into animals. The Indians bitterly comment: They ‘promise you wine/And sell you nothing but vinegar’ (‘apregonan vino/y venden vinagre agora’) (Carvajal 2008, 84–85). As Jáuregui remarks, the irony in this passage hints both at the Eucharist, the transubstantiation and the crucifixion (Jáuregui 2008a, 85, note 45). The irony is meant to draw a parallel between the Spanish conquerors and those guards who offered vinegar to Jesus on the cross; but, intentionally or not, the passage also seems an ironic comment on one of the most holy Catholic beliefs: the magical transformation of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. In the ritual of the Eucharist, the material representations of the dead body of Christ, those insignificant fragments of materiality (bread and wine), come to life and ‘speak’ of spiritual truth. There is an uncanny resemblance between the Eucharist and the way the Indians in scene 19 let the bodily parts and blood of the dead speak truth to the court. This resemblance may be read positively as a confirmation of the sacred and magic powers of forensic rhetoric, but it also creates an ironic twist since the bread and wine of the holy ritual are linked directly with mutilated body parts. This link is strengthened by a deeper look into the Eucharist. The bread/wine is called the ‘host’ since they host the body and spirit of Christ. But the word “host” derives from the word ‘hostis’, which in Latin means ‘victim’. Christ is the ultimate victim, who died on behalf of mankind. By eating the bread and drinking the wine, the Catholic believer becomes part of the victimized body of Christ. The transubstantiation secures the inclusion of the believer in a Christian communion, but the inclusion goes through self-victimization. In the Catholic version of the ritual, victimhood is not represented; it is not symbolic; it is incarnated and made literal in the bread and wine of the ritual. Later in the scene, Saint Agustín stresses that the Indians are “del bando de Cristo” (they belong to “the hosts of Christ”) (Carvajal 2008, 104–05) because they

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have accepted the Catholic faith and have participated in the ritual of the Eucharist. In the Eucharist, the Catholic believer literally eats the body of Christ and drinks his blood. Carlos A.  Jáuregui has stressed the cannibalistic aspects of the Eucharist and related them to the generally unrestricted Spanish appetites (Jáuregui 2006, 110). As the former pope, Joseph Ratzinger, who ‘placed the sacred liturgy as one of the core priorities of [the] pontificate’ explains, ‘eucharistia is the gift of communion in which the Lord becomes our food’ (Cardó 2019, 6). In the Eucharist, there is a presumed holy synthesis between body and spirit. In the carnival, this synthesis is threatened, or, as Bakhtin would have it, it is confirmed through a displacement to the secular sphere. The aim of the dethronement of the sacred and powerful is not to eradicate everything but to reinstall another kind of ‘secular community’ in which all are equal. There is an ironic parallel between the Eucharist and the carnival that ultimately raises critical questions about the status of the sacred. The incorporation of carnivalesque elements into this play may endanger the Christian reading of the ending of scene 19 and the play as such.

Ironic Justice In the play, Death herself is the great judge and, given that she is judge in the Court of Death, her function is that of the ultimate equalizer. However, the scenes do not give the final word to Death but, most often, first to the saints and then to Satan, Flesh and World. In scene 19, both the saints and Satan, Flesh and World mock the Indians and make them out to be the guilty party. The empowerment of the oppressed Indians that the court was meant to secure is lost. Therefore, it is easy to conclude that the equalizing power of the danse macabre is undermined by the very court that should have ensured it. That Death acknowledges that wrong has been done to the Indians and yet simultaneously denies that the court can address this problem demonstrates the court’s limitations. However, this does not mean that the Indians’ words have been lost on the audience. On the contrary, the Indians have fully demonstrated that they are rational beings, and as Ortega y Medina argues: Since the argument by the pro-­ slavery intellectuals in the period, for instance by Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, was that the Indians lacked rationality and therefore were natural slaves, demonstrating their rationality is an argument against enslavement (see

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Chap. 3). However, their rationality runs aground on the shoals of the court’s irrationality. The dissociation of the spirit and the body (the intention and reality of the court) must have made the audience wonder about the foundation of justice—especially since the play is unfolding within the genre of the danse macabre, which is a carnivalesque drama of equality. Though true equality only exists in the moment of dying, the carnivalesque elements point to the potentiality of social equality. These carnivalesque elements are embedded in the genre of danse macabre, but they are also found in many of the comic if not downright farcical elements of the play (Ortega y Medina 1955, 491). These comic elements work against the tragic ending especially because laughter is not only turned against the individuals who appear before the court but also the court system itself, which behaves in an often joyful and earthy way. The clash between the comic and the tragic elements and the clash between the ideal equality and real inequality creates an ironic and critical discourse. This does not mean that the play is not Christian. It is inscribed into a Christian tradition and if you read it au pié de la lettre, it follows Christian dogmatism. However, the theatrical playfulness allows for the incorporation of secular and historical concerns and for an investigation of the foundation of justice. The carnival is interesting in a human rights context because it creates a collective, corporeal sense of universal community and equality that cuts across any cultural boundaries and creates an immediate political reality. Thus, despite the fact that justice is denied to the Indians, an awareness of their rights is installed in the minds of the audience in a very concrete way. Let us now turn to Tragedy of Atawallpa’s death that also uses carnivalesque strategies but in a completely different way.

Tragedy of Atawallpa’s Death The American play Tragedia del fin de Atawallpa is anonymous. It allegedly originates in Quechua communities in Peru. In the introduction to the bilingual edition of the play (1957), Jesús Lara argues that the drama is an original Inca wanka (an Indian form of tragedy), written solely in Quechua and that it dates back to the 1550s. Lara situates the play firmly within a popular, indigenous oral culture of resistance. According to the introduction, his Spanish translation is based on a version found in 1871 (La Chayante version) (Lara 1993a, 18–28). Lara assumes that the

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Chayante version is an ‘original’ version—not in the sense that it is a pristine sixteenth-century version but in the sense that it has been handed down to him and us as part of an uneven but also unbroken tradition of performances that show the death of Atahualpa. Doubts have been raised about the originality of Lara’s manuscript, but even if this particular play is not original, it reflects a tradition of largely similar Indian plays about the death of Atahualpa.19 Patricio Vallejo reminds us that, though the plays have an Indian origin and are enacted by American Indians, they do not express a clear continuity of a pre-Hispanic tradition but a contemporary expression of the pre-Hispanic past within a new political order (Vallejo 1997, 85). Therefore, completely contrary to what has often been concluded, for instance, by Jesús Lara himself, these plays should not be seen as pure Indian pièces de resistance but as much more ambiguous products of colonial ideology, indigenous interests and local culture. However, this does not mean that there is not a strong Indian component, for instance, in the form of the drama. This has also been documented by Nathan Wachtel, who analyses a number of similar dramas and dances and concludes that there is a coherent indigenous 19  The drama Tragedia del fin de Atawallpa exists in three versions: La Chayanta, the manuscript from Santa Lucía, and the one from San Pedro de Buena Vista. There are small differences between these manuscripts. Some doubt has been cast on the status and originality of the Chayante manuscript. (Itier 2001, 103); (Duviols 2000, 216). César Itier even claims that the Chayante version never existed in an Indian version, and that it was entirely written by Jesús Lara himself on the basis of different historical sources in order to give the impression that the Inca people possessed a great literature (Itier 2001, 103). Lara was a Bolivian writer and expert on Pre-Columbian culture and performance traditions, so if the Chayante version was created by him, he would do his utmost to make sure it followed the rules of Pre-Columbian theater, but of course this may change our understanding of the text and a full study would discuss the differences between this version and the others in more detail. However, other researchers have argued that the repetitive form of the play indicates that it derives from an old oral tradition. Betty Osorio has argued that the plays are part of a truly Andean tradition: ‘Esta tradición, tan profundamente arraigada a las formas de vida andinas, tiene capacidad para agenciar proyectors politicos indígenas’ (Osorio 2008, 293). It has been confirmed by Nicolás de Arsanz y Vela that a play existed in 1555 with the title of Ruina del Imperio Ingal on the same topic (Beyersdorff 1993, 197) and that many different versions have been circulating ever since (Beyersdorff 1993, 195). The dream of finding the first, original version is a utopian vision. We only have bastard versions since all previous versions were handed down orally and are not available. The very idea of originality is changed by the hybridity of the performance culture. In this chapter, I analyze the Chayante version but it will be understood as part of a larger performance culture, documented, for example, by Nathan Wachtel (Wachtel 1972).

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tradition of performances that are all based on the same basic story (Wachtel 1972, 97). According to Jesús Lara, the Tragedy of Atawallpa’s Death is a wanka, which is different from European tragedy because it is only tragic in its content (Lara 1993a, 40). The tragic content is the captivity and decapitation of the protagonist, the Incan emperor Atau Wallpa (i.e. Atahualpa). However, as I shall argue, it is not only a tragedy but also a revenge drama since Atau Wallpa succeeds in pronouncing a curse upon the conquistadors. In the end, the conquistador Francisco Pizarro is condemned to death by the allegorical figure of Spain and executed by Diego de Almagro. Thus, the play demonstrates both defeat and vindication. The events of the play are highly dramatic, but the play seems more concerned with the interpretation of the events than the events themselves. The form of the play is ritualistic, ruled by rhythm and a system of parallellisms and repetitions that seem to halt the dramatic action in order to create chain reactions and mirror effects among different actors and to expose power relations spatially. The play is interesting for three reasons: It shows the encounter between the Spanish conquerors and the Inca empire not only as military event but as a clash between two different epistemologies or knowledge cultures. Politically, it demonstrates how you insist on cultural dignity and political agency in the face of radical defeat and humiliation. Finally, through its ritualistic form, it creates a parallel between the Incan and the Spanish empires and makes an appeal not only to ius gentium but to the principles of just war and international justice. At the beginning of the play, we see Atau Wallpa, who has just awakened from a nightmare in which he dreamed of foreign men, dressed in iron, who arrive in America.20 He is worried and is not sure what to make of the dream. Therefore, he asks the priest Waylla Wisa to go to sleep and, perhaps, see more of the future in his dreams. In his slumber, Waylla Wisa miraculously continues Atau Wallpa’s dream, and is able to add more details to the picture of the foreigners. They are bearded and have three pointed horns (‘cuernos puntiagudos’), which in a European context

20  According to historical sources, it was not Atahualpa who had had this dream but one of his ancestors (Wachtel 1972, 41). For dramatic reasons, it is better to let Atahualpa have this dream.

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ironically has associations with the Devil.21 In the following scenes, the Indians try to understand why the Spanish have come. A surprisingly significant part of the play is about the epistemological and political doubts that the Indians have about the Spanish, whereas the actual action is narrated in very brief passages. Atau Wallpa involves all his men in the interpretation of the Spanish acts and words, but none of them understands them. At the second meeting with the Spanish conquerors, Atau Wallpa is arrested by Francisco Pizarro. Atau Wallpa is allowed to say goodbye to his priest Waylla Wisa, his warriors and his children. The goodbye scene is a very long scene that allows for the lamentation of the followers of Atau Wallpa. Until this point in the drama, which is more than two-thirds into the play, the power balance is in favor of the Spanish. Though their intentions are incomprehensible, they are depicted as powerful, militant people whose demands cannot be rejected; The Indians are victims, who are worried, desperate and sorrowful. As the princesses say farewell to their father, they are crying inconsolably, and even Atau Wallpa’s fiercest warriors (Khishkis and Challkuchima) are at a loss about what to do without their king. However, in precisely this scene in which Atau Wallpa is shown as a helpless victim of the Spanish conquerors, the tables are suddenly turned. There is a peripeteia that changes the understanding of the drama completely. Atau Wallpa curses Pizarro; Pizarro becomes afraid and calls Atau Wallpa a fool who should not be listened to. Atau Wallpa advises his son to go to Villapampa (a famous rebellious city), declines the offer of Christianity, and is beheaded, which is followed by a long scene of mourning. In the final pages of the drama, Pizarro arrives in Spain and presents the blood-dripping trophy head of Atau Wallpa to the allegorical figure of Spain. Surprisingly, Spain condemns the murder of Atau Wallpa. Spain calls Pizarro a traitor and orders another conquistador, Diego de Almagro, to kill Pizarro and burn all his belongings. The play is not divided into acts or scenes, but it is possible to make the following division based on plot: 1. Epistemological doubts and discussions about the nature of the Spanish and their intentions (53–73). 21  In fact, the information of the pointed horns may have been added under inspiration of Christian beliefs in the devil.

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2. First meeting with the Spanish, represented by Diego de Almagro. The Incas are represented by Waylla Wisa. Reflection on why the Spanish have come (73–99). 3. Second meeting with the Spanish, represented by Francisco Pizarro. The Incas are represented by Túpaj and Atau Wallpa. Pizarro arrests Atau Wallpa. He says goodbye to his children, the priest Waylla Wisa, and his warriors and servants (99–129). 4. Peripeteia. Atau Wallpa pronounces a solemn curse upon Pizarro and the Spanish conquerors and declines the offer to be christened (129–133). 5. Pizarro decapitates Atau Wallpa. Mourning of the priest Waylla Wisa, children, warriors and servants for Atau Wallpa (133–141). 6. Conclusion: Pizarro presents the head of Atau Wallpa to the allegorical figure of ‘Spain’. ‘Spain’ calls Pizarro a traitor and pronounces a death sentence upon him, ordering Diego de Almagro to execute Pizarro and destroy his house and all that he owns, so that nothing will remain of him (141–147) (Lara 1993b).22 The peripeteia is a very brief turning point in the play. Atau Wallpa is shown as a helpless victim and a ‘strong’ avenger almost in the same moment. The death sentence against Pizarro is also reported in a very brief manner. Hardly has he set foot on land in Spain and displayed his trophy head (the head of Atau Wallpa) when he is declared a traitor and condemned to death. The long scenes of doubts and mourning followed by hasty actions and sudden shifts in destiny create a special ‘abrupt’ rhythm in the play. Though the play was created some time after the conquest and must logically be based on historical memory, it is written as if we were in the middle of the conquest. Thus, the drama is told from a moment of shock, trauma and crisis. This explains the long scenes of epistemological and political doubts, of mourning and lamentation, and also why, even when actions are performed, they are wrapped up in strange doubts.

22  Nathan Wachtel divides the play into four parts: (1) dreams, (2) first encounters, (3) central meeting between the Indian and Spanish rulers, and (4) death of the Indian ruler, lamentations, castigation of Pizarro (Wachtel 1972, 71). However, this division overlooks the moment of peripeteia and the curse by Atau Wallpa of Pizarro.

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From Epistemological Doubts to Resistance One of the words that is most often used in the play is the word ‘maybe’ (or synonyms of ‘maybe’). The word ‘quizá’ or ‘quizás’ is used seven times; the word ‘tal véz’ is used six times; and the word ‘acaso’ is used 21 times, a total of 34 times. This frequency of the word ‘maybe’ signals epistemological insecurity, which is also underlined by an extensive use of subjunctives and the hypothetical future tense. The epistemological crisis induced by the conquest is expressed from the very first moment. When Atau Wallpa first sees the Spaniards in his nightmare, he is bewildered. Are these strange men clad in iron real, or do they only belong to a dream? Are they gods, devils, beasts, or human beings? Have they arrived as friends or as enemies? In order to understand the situation, Atau Wallpa makes the counterintuitive move of going to sleep again and to ask Waylla Wisa to sleep. Sleeping to reach truth is later called: seeking help from Mother Moon. According to the warrior Khishkis, sleeping helps to interpret ‘that which seems to us impenetrable’ (‘esto que se nos muestra impenetrable’) (Lara 1993b, 85). However, when Wisa goes to sleep, he sees nothing at first: … observo por este lado y mis ojos no encuentran nada, miro por este lado, tampoco se ve nada; Miro por aquel lado, Y no hay nada que pueda verse. Miro por todos los costados, Pero no se descubre nada; Ni el frío siquiera, ni el viento, Nada hay que se aproxime (Lara 1993b, 65). (… I look this way And my eyes don’t see anything, I look that way, But nothing is seen there either. I look in all directions, But nothing can be discovered; Not even coldness, nor wind, Nothing is approaching.)

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Wisa looks for truth but finds nothing, meaning not only that there is nothing to be found but also that what is found is nothingness, that is, a void. The radical disorientation of the senses and the disrupted link between senses and truth make for a dangerous situation. Not being able to see can make the Indians easy victims; and, in fact, Diego de Almagro explains to Waylla Wisa that King Philip of Spain demands ‘blind obedience’ (‘ciega obediencia’) (Lara 1993b, 73). Whereas the Indians are occupied in a lively discussion with the emperor about how to interpret strange meanings, the Spanish presumably follow their king blindly. To look for meaning and find nothing is a bad omen, and the deathlike sleep in which Wisa is caught up and from which it takes four men to wake him is in itself so unusual and threatening that the Sun God, according to Challkuchima, becomes hidden by sad clouds (‘… nuestro Padre el Sol, que sabe depurar, se envuelve en nubes de tristeza’) (ibid. 93). The fact that the sleep that was supposed to save the Incan empire makes the most important Incan god sad underlines the seriousness of the state of sleep: It is deathlike and seems to threaten the Incan world order itself. However, sleep turns out to be a paragon. The process of going through the experience of nothingness and the deathlike sleep opens up the path for a new kind of knowledge or for knowledge of the new, the unprecedented. After having slept more—and always in a deathlike way in which it is almost impossible to wake him up, Wisa declares that he has not been able to see anything but that ‘an interior voice’ has told him about some bearded, aggressive men who are approaching (‘Aunque no he visto nada,/una voz interior me dice’ (ibid. 71)) (‘Even though I have not seen anything, an interior voice tells me’). With the help of Mother Luna, the Indians are able to ‘see’ the threat to Father Sun, meaning the Incan empire. A climax in the departure scene, which is the scene of the peripeteia, is Atau Wallpa’s farewell words to his son Inkaj Churin. It begins like this: ¿En qué trance nos vemos?, ¿realidad o sueño es esto? Nos desampara nuestro Padre Sol y permite la ruina de todos nuestros súbditos. Ya casi nada de vida me resta, he de acabarme sin remedio; ya todo el ser se me quebranta y el corazón se me destroza;

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desapareceré por siempre abandonando ésta mi tierra y a los incas, mis hijos, los dispersaré en mi tristeza. Y sólo los barbudos enemigos quedarán en mi tierra sojuzgando a mis hijos! (Lara 1993b, 123) (In what trance do we see ourselves? Is this real or a dream? Our Father Sun has left us behind and has allowed the destruction of all our subjects. Now I have hardly any life left, I am left without any means; now all my being is falling apart and my heart is destroyed I will disappear forever, abandoning this land of mine and the Incas, my children, I disperse them in my sadness. And only the bearded enemies will be living in my land and put the yoke on the shoulders of my children.)

At this moment of intense crisis in which the Incan emperor realizes his defeat, the destruction of the entire empire, and the coming enslavement of the Indian people, he asks himself whether what he is experiencing is a dream or whether it is real. Since the play was created some years after this event, the audience was already aware of the destruction. So, Atau Wallpa’s question could be seen as purely rhetorical, but, as it turns out, it is not. The dreamlike character signals difficulty of cognition or refusal to accept the facts, a state of mind that prepares him and the audience for revenge. The ‘trance’ and the sorrowful mood in which the emperor finds himself leads directly to a vision of resistance: Pero mis hijos, los que vengan, En el future recordando Que éste fue el país de Atau Wallpa, Su Inca, su padre y su único señor, Arrojarán de aquí,

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Conseguirán que vuelvan a su tierra Cuantos barbudos enemigos hayan Venido codiciosos De nuestro oro y de nuestra plata (Lara 1993b, 123). (But my children, those who’ll live in the future and remember that this land belonged to Atau Wallpa, their Inca, their father and their only lord, will throw them out, they will make them return to their land all the bearded enemies who came greedy after our gold and our silver.)

This is not the speech of a defeated man but of an emperor who hopes for or sees revenge in the future. In his final words to his son Inkaj Churín, he orders him to go to Willkapampa with family and allies and never talk with the Spanish. Willkapampa (today’s Vilcabamba) became the city of the neo-Incan ‘rump state’. It was ruled not by Atau Wallpa’s son but by his younger brother, Manco Inca Yupanqui (Manco II). Manco Inca Yupanqui became father of Túpac Amaro, who led the last military resistance to the Spanish and was decapitated in 1572. By asking his son to go to Vilcabamba, a direct link is made between Atahualpa (the dying Incan king) and Túpac Amaro (the later Incan rebel against Spanish rule).23 Whereas many historical sources depict Atahualpa in captivity as a defeated and humiliated man, this is not how Atau Wallpa appears in this play. In the farewell scene, he and his subjects maintain imperial dignity and order. Just before the execution, Atau Wallpa uses his authority as a military leader to pronounce a curse upon Pizarro. Even though he calls

23  One of the reasons Atau Wallpa here assigns the role of leader of Incan resistance to his son and not his younger half-brother Manco is probably that Manco sided with Huáscar in the duel for power between Atau Wallpa and Huáscar (Wachtel 1972, 255).

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Pizarro wiraqocha, which means ‘god’,24 he is not subdued but promises to haunt Pizarro’s soul eternally or, as Atau Wallpa explains with a more forensic phrase: Pizarro will be stained by his blood eternally (‘llevarás la mancilla de mi sangre eternamente’ (Lara 1993b, 129)). This curse is aimed at Pizarro as a person, but it is also directed by extension at the empire of Spain, which has to integrate the slaughter of the Indians and the killing of the Incan king into its national history. This crime will haunt Spain, and, as Atau Wallpa foresees, they will not be able to wash away the evidence. One clear sign of Atau Wallpa’s intractable position is that, contrary to historical fact, he rejects the offer to be baptized. Though the Spanish priest, Valverde, gives a detailed description of the Christian cosmology, the division between Heaven and Hell, the possibility of heavenly reward, and the threat of damnation, Atau Wallpa’s only reply, after hearing all this and being handed the Bible, is that this means absolutely nothing to him: ‘no me dice absolutamente nada’ (Lara 1993b, 131). This Bible scene is crucial for understanding the play and its reinterpretation of the encounter and power balance between the Spanish and the Incan rulers. Historically, the meeting that ended with the slaughter of approximately 6000–7000 Incan soldiers, courtiers, guards, dancers, etc., took place at Cajamarca on November 16, 1532. Just before the massacre, Pizarro had invited the Incan ruler and his men to a peaceful meeting in the main square of Cajamarca. When Atahualpa arrived with all his men, guards and soldiers, the square was empty. The Spanish were hiding in three houses close to the square. According to testimonies and history books, the only Spanish person present was the friar, Valverde, who presented the Bible to Atahualpa. Atahualpa threw the Bible on the ground, and this action immediately triggered the devastating Spanish attack, which meant the downfall of the entire Incan empire. It has been debated whether Atahualpa threw the Bible on the ground consciously to show disrespect for the Christian religion or dropped it accidentally. It has been debated whether, if he wanted to show disrespect, 24  In many historical sources it is told how the Incan rulers believed that the Spanish conquerors were gods since it had been foretold in their religious myths that gods would come by way of the sea. This is one of the reasons they welcomed the Spanish at the crucial meeting in Cajamarca on November 26, 1532 (Garcilaso de la Vega 1960, Vol. II, 177–178); (León-­ Portilla 1964, 117). Though the numerical balance between Spanish and Incan army was highly in favor of the Incas (approx. 20,000 Incan men to fewer than 200 Spanish men), the Incan army could not defend itself.

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was it because he was an arrogant tyrant (as claimed, for instance, by Francisco de Jérez and Hernando Pizarro) or was it because the Spanish had already shown disrespect to his own welcoming gestures? According to Titu Cusi Yupanqui, Atahualpa offered the Spanish the drink chilcha (or quillca), which they spilled on the ground without drinking (Seed 1991, 20). Did Atahualpa actually throw the Bible on the ground, or did he drop it because he could not read? Or was it, in fact, Valverde himself who dropped the book (Seed 1991, 8ff)? There are also some doubts about what book Valverde actually handed to Atahualpa: was it, in fact, the Bible, or was it the Summa contra Gentiles by Thomas Aquinas, written to convert Muslims to the Christian faith? Or was it the infamous Requirimiento (‘The Requirement’), a note that, by royal order, conquerors were to read before indigenous people before attacking. In the Requirement, the Spanish conquerors ask the indigenous people to subject themselves to the Spanish crown and the Christian faith. If they do not, the Spanish will hunt them down, kill them, take their gold and make them slaves (Hanke 2002, 33).25 It is essential to understand what happened because immediately after the Bible scene, the Spanish conquerors attacked the Incan emperor and the crowd, and, with this one attack, they basically won the war against Atahualpa. The inequality in technology of weapons decided the outcome of the war; but, according to historical sources, the attack was initiated due to misunderstandings and the failure of the ‘diplomatic’ encounter that went before.26 In the play Tragedia del fin de Atawallpa, the order of events is turned around. The Bible scene does not occur until after Pizarro has captured Atau Wallpa and Atau Wallpa has said goodbye to his people and cursed Pizarro. Valverde does not simply present a book. He gives an explanation of Christian cosmology. This is important since the Incan people do not know the technology of writing, so that any even minimally genuine offer of Christianity should be given verbally, face to face. In the play, books have previously been described as incomprehensible ‘white cloth’ (Lara 1993b, 78–79) and letters have been described as a swarming flock of ants 25  See also Sabine G. Mac Cormack’s useful presentation of the sources about the encounter (Mac Cormack 1988, 694–711). 26  It is, of course, highly unlikely that a diplomatic meeting could have hindered the war or the attack of the Spanish army. Moreover, some sources document that Atahualpa’s intention was to capture the Spanish. He did not himself come to the meeting with purely friendly intentions. He just miscalculated the strength of his power.

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(‘hervidero de hormigas’) or as ‘birds’ footprints on a muddy river bank’ (‘las patas de pájaros en las lodosas orillas del río’) (ibid. 79). The fact that Valverde not only offers a book but takes (some) time to explain Christianity to Atau Wallpa serves as a sign of his good intentions. However, the fact that Atau Wallpa actually receives an explanation of Christianity and then rejects it serves as a sign of his intransigent, rebellious nature or his wish to stay loyal to Incan gods. As mentioned previously, Atau Wallpa’s literal answer is: ‘No me dice absolutamente nada’ (‘this means absolutely nothing to me’). The meaning of this sentence may be that he literally cannot read and, therefore, does not understand the book; but, since Valverde has just explained it to him, this sentence forms an explicit rejection of the cosmology of Christianity. Contrary to the Indians in Carvajal’s play, Atau Wallpa in this Indian play remains true to his own religion. In the eyes of Francisco Pizarro, he remains a foreigner; and, when he kills him, he calls him a ‘black savage’ (‘negro salvaje’). The interesting thing about the Indian play is that, even though or because Atau Wallpa refuses to be christened and refuses to subject himself to Spanish power, he is received by the Spanish emperor as a ruler on equal footing. In contrast with what happens in Carvajal’s play, the Indians do get some kind of revenge in this play.

Decapitation When Pizarro arrives triumphantly in Spain with the bloody trophy head of Atau Wallpa in his hand, proudly proclaiming his victory over the ‘ignorant Inca’ (‘inca ignorante’ (Lara 1993b, 143)), the allegorical figure of Spain is shocked by Pizarro’s deed, calls him a traitor, and orders him to be executed by bonfire and all his belongings destroyed, so that nothing will remain of him: ‘Of this infamous warrior/nothing must remain. These are my orders’ (‘De ese guerrero infame/no debe quedar nada. Esto es cuanto yo ordeno’ (Lara 1993b, 147)). The executioner is Diego de Almagro, supposedly, Diego de Almagro the Older, the conquistador (1475–1532) who participated in the battle of Peru, but who had fallen out with the Pizarro brothers because he felt cheated out of positions and riches stolen during the conquest. In real life, he was killed already in 1538 by Francisco Pizarro’s brother, Hernando Pizarro. According to witness accounts, Hernando Pizarro taunted Diego de Almagro with cowardice when he begged for his life. To let Diego de Almagro the Older execute

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Francisco Pizarro is an anachronism but it fits with the play’s Indian perspective. As the historian Poma de Ayala states, Diego de Almagro had not agreed in Pizarro’s decision to execute Atahualpa (Poma de Ayala 1980, 284).27 Thus there may have been some sympathy for the conquistador, Diego de Almagro, compared with Pizarro. However, the executioner may also be Diego de Almagro’s mestizo son, Diego de Almagro the Younger (1520–1542). That would fit better with the historical facts. Though the real execution did not happen in Spain, but in Lima, Pizarro was in fact killed (in 1541) by sword by Diego de Almagro, the Younger and his followers. Since this Almagro was a mestizo, the play can be said to depict the revenge of hybrid America upon Spain.28 The ambiguity about the character Diego de Almagro creates an interesting ambivalence about the interpretation of the play. However, in both cases, Francisco Pizarro, who is normally celebrated as the great conquistador of the Incan empire (Covey 2020, 275), is shown to be a brutal and rash tyrant, a greedy subjugator only interested in gold and silver and condemned even by the Spanish crown. At the end of the play, it is not only the history of the Incan downfall that is reinterpreted but also the history of the Spanish empire. But why does the figure of Spain (the king) react with such harshness against Pizarro? Is it because he feels sorry for the Indians? Or is it rather because he sees Atau Walpa as a mirror image of himself. Spain says: ¿Qué me dices, Pizarro? ¡Atónito me dejas! ¿Cómo has ido a hacer eso? Ese rostro que me has traído es igual que mi rostro. ¿Cuándo te mandé you a dar muerte a este Inca? Ahora serás ajusticiado. (Lara 1993b, 143)

27  Other historians claim that it was the men of Almagro who were mostly in favor of killing Atahualpa. (Lavallé 2004, 42). It is even narrated how Francisco Pizarro cried at the funeral of Atahualpa (Lavallé 2004, 47). 28  At the murder of Francisco Pizarro, Diego de Almagro, the Younger, was 21 years old. Afterwards, he was proclaimed governor of Peru, but he was killed the year after in 1542.

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(What are you telling me Pizarro? You leave me astounded! Why did you do this? That face that you bring to me is similar to my own. When did I ask you to murder this Inca? Now you will be condemned.)

Contrary to Pizarro’s expectation, the Spanish king represented by the allegorical figure called Spain is not happy about the victory over the Incan empire but focuses instead on the similarity between himself and Atau Wallpa. This similarity is political and structural. Like the Spanish king, the Incan emperor was an absolute sovereign and, seen through the eyes of a sovereign ruler, a murderous attack on an emperor is a capital crime. To stress the similarity between Atau Wallpa and the King of Spain is to shift the interpretation of the conquest entirely. It cannot any longer be seen as a conquest by a civilized nation of savage territory. Rather, the Conquest should be understood as belligerence between two parallel nations of equal importance. Though there is much focus on the trauma of the Indians in the drama, the audience is not asked to react emotionally and feel humanitarian empathy with the Indians; they are asked to understand the principles of sovereignty and just war morality. When the Spanish king recognizes his own face in the blood-dripping head of the late Incan emperor, he literally accepts the equality of the Spanish and the Inca empires. Just as Spain, the Inca empire should not be attacked if it does not provoke its neighbors. Furthermore, the allegorical figure of Spain feels disgusted and uncomfortable because Pizarro demonstrates how an ordinary military captain can behead an absolute ruler. The decapitation of Atau Wallpa is, thus, a threat both to national sovereignty and the international world order. Clearly, the punishment for this must be death. According to the history books, Atahualpa (1502–1533) was garroted on July 26, 1533 by Francisco Pizarro (Garcilaso de la Vega 1960, Vol. III, 67). The intention was to burn him alive, but he was afraid that this would damage the transport of his soul to the hereafter. Therefore, he chose the second option presented to him—namely, to be baptized and executed by garrote. In his Nueva Coronica i buen gobierno from 1615, another early historian, Poma de Ayala, also writes that Atahualpa was

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garroted, but he adds that Pizarro afterwards had him decapitated (Poma de Ayala 1980, 284). In the illustration, accompanying the description, Atahualpa is decapitated by sword (Fig. 4.2). The play Tragedia del fin de Atawallpa also chooses to have Atau Wallpa decapitated. Decapitation after death is a highly symbolic gesture and by synechdoche an attack at the power center of the Incan empire. To have Francisco Pizarro

Fig. 4.2  ‘Córtanle la caveza a Atagualpa Inga’ ca. 1615 (Poma de Ayala 1980, 283). The picture is kindly provided by the Royal Danish Library, GKS 2232 kvart: Guaman Poma de Ayala, Nueva corónica y buen gobierno (c. 1615), page 390 [392]

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decapitate Atau Wallpa and take the head as a trophy for the Spanish king is a highly dramatic twist that adds a layer of monstrosity to the actual killing and a touch of indigenous flavor. Taking trophy heads was an important tradition in different parts of America, including the Incan empire. Decapitation was used in the region both as a method of execution and as postmortem dismemberment. As Garrido and Morales have formulated it: ‘Dismembered heads are a powerful and iconic symbol of violence and power in the Andes’ (Garrido and Morales 2019, 606).29 Poma de Ayala writes that taking trophy heads of enemies and using their bodies disrespectfully was a way of demonstrating victory and power. For instance, the Incas made drums of the bodies of rebels and used their skulls for drinking chicha (Poma de Ayala 1980, 224). But, again, we see a direct link between defeat and resistance because, as it has been suggested by Mercedes Lopez Baralt, the image of the decapitation of Atahualpa is the start of the oral Inkarri myth, which has played a huge role through the centuries as a story of resistance for indigenous people in the Andes. According to this myth, just before his death, Atahualpa vowed that he would come back to avenge his murder and the destruction of his empire. In order to avoid this, the Spanish conquerors cut up the body of Atahualpa and buried the parts in different locations in Peru. His head is supposedly buried under the presidential palace in Lima, his arms in Cuzco, and his legs in Ayacucho. In the story, these body parts are growing underneath the ground; and, one day, the Inca king will rise and take back his kingdom (López-Baralt 2016, 209). The dismemberment of the body is essential to the myth, and this may be one reason Guamán Poma de Ayala underlines decapitation. In Poma de Ayala, the beheading of Atahualpa is mirrored by the decapitation of Tupac Amaru (Fig. 4.3) which lends even more power to Atahualpa’s beheading as a symbol of resistance Amaru had kept up opposition in the neo-Inca State of Vilcabamba (or Willkapampa). He was executed by decapitation by Francisco de Toledo in 1572. According to Leonardo García Pabón, there is a structural resemblance between the execution of Atahualpa and Tupac Amaru (Garcia Pabon 1992, 230). In illustrations of the two decapitations in Poma de Ayala’s chronicle, there are certain similarities; but, at the bottom of the image of the 29  Decapitated bodies from the Late Horizon period (1476–1532) and earlier have been found in Paracas, Nasca, Conchopata and Ayacucho, regions of today’s Peru, and northern Chile (Garrido and Morales 2019, 606–608).

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Fig. 4.3  ‘A Topa Amaro le cortan la caveza en el Cuzco’ ca. 1615 (Poma de Ayala 1980, 333) The picture is kindly provided by the Royal Danish Library, GKS 2232 kvart: Guaman Poma de Ayala, Nueva corónica y buen gobierno (c. 1615), page 451 [453]. Text in the picture: / Ynga Uana Cauri, maytam rinqui? Sapra aucanchiccho mana huchayocta concayquita cuchon? [Inka Wana Qawri, ¿adónde te has ido? ¿Es que nuestro enemigo perverso te va a cortar el cuello a ti, que eres inocente?] / en el Cuzco /]

decapitation of Túpac Amaru (Topa Amaro), we also see the Andean people mourning and elegiacally crying: ‘Ynca uana cauri maytam rinqui sapra aucanchiccho mana huchayocta concayquita cuchon’, which means, ‘Inca Huanacauri, where have you gone? Maybe, our bearded enemy has

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cut your throat though you are innocent’ (Fig. 4.3).30 This is the first documentation in writing of the Incan people mourning the death of their king (López-­Baralt 2016, 214); and it is joined by a legal accusation of unjust war. Mourning is a situation of grief and vulnerability, and the death of a king might cast a society into political crisis since it leaves a temporary vacuum of power. However, as demonstrated by López Baralt, there is an intimate connection in some of the earliest works on the execution of Inca kings between lamentation and resistance. This is seen, for instance, in the anonymous Inca poem Apu Inka Atawallpaman (sixteenth century). In this poem, the death of Túpac Amaru is followed by a massive public mourning scene in which thousands of women (300,000)31 enter the central square and perform a public lamentation to protest the killing of their king: ‘Why did they cut of your head, what crimes, what treachery did you commit to deserve this death?’ (my translation).32 The old Incan mourning rituals were connected with the public celebration of the empire and ancestral rulers, the memory of whom was kept alive through the so-called panaca system (Osorio 2008, 293); (Beyersdorff 1993, 199).33 The mourning processes in connection with the deaths of Atahualpa and Túpac Amaru are directly connected to the destruction of the whole empire and resistance to Spanish violence. The very show of public mourning becomes political. In the centuries to come, reenactments of the execution of Atahualpa or Tupac Amaru and public lamentation became immensely popular and continuously provoked Spanish authorities and led to censorship. The fact that downfall, trauma and mourning lead to resistance might be one explanation for the popularity among the defeated Indians of plays about their defeat. According to 30  My translation of López Baralt’s translation into Spanish (‘Inca Huanacauri, ¿a dónde te has ido? ¿Acaso nuestro enemigo barbado te ha cortado el cuello, siendo tú inocente?’) (López-Baralt 2016, 214). 31  According to historical sources, there were 1,000–15,000 people present (Murua writes: ‘una multitud de indios [sic], que llenaron completamente la plaza, vieron el lamentable espectáculo de que su señor e inca iba a morir, ensordecieron los cielos, haciéndolos reverberar con sus llantos y lamentos’ (Murúa 1946, 217). 32  ‘Inca, ¿por qué te llevan a cortar la cabeza, qué delitos, qué traiciones has hecho para merecer tal muerte?’ (Garcilaso de la Vega 1960, Vol. 2, Libro Octavo, XIX, 170–71). 33  The panaca was a group of people whose official role was to keep the memory of previous rulers alive in the public memory through songs and other representations (Osorio 2008, 293).

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Betty Osorio, plays about the execution of the Inca kings and the destruction of the Inca empire were performed as living, oral and ritualistic pièces de résistance against Spanish colonialism (Osorio 2008, 292).34 At the end of the play The Tragedy of Atawallpa’s Death, Atau Wallpa is shown to be stronger than Pizarro and, within the logic of the play, to have ‘history on his side’.

Orality and the Function of Repetition The Inca empire was a very hierarchical society in which the ruler was respected as a godlike figure. This is also the case in this play. There is nothing democratic about the Inca society in any modern sense of the word and no egalitarian political structure. One of the reasons the play spends so much time on the scenes interpreting Spanish intentions and the farewell scenes is that it allows for a vivid demonstration of the hierarchical power structure and the political strength of Atau Wallpa. All the servants, family members and soldiers address Atau Wallpa in the most respectful manner as if he were the son of God (the sun) and the only true ruler. Symbolic power items are handed back and forth between people of different ranks to show the hierarchy of orders. Not once does the emperor speak with people of lower orders; he talks with people directly below him, who then take the message down the line. However, it is worth remarking that the respect is mutual between Atau Wallpa and all the people with whom he speaks. Several times, the princesses address their father in this way: ‘Amado y único señor/ Atau Wallpa, Inca mío…’ (‘Beloved and only master/Atau Wallpa, my Inca’). And he calls them ‘adorables and good hearted’ (‘adorables y tiernas’) whenever

34  A proof of this is that, in the eighteenth century, after the great anti-colonial battle in 1780, led by the indigenous caudillo Jose Gabriel Condorcanqui Noguera who descended from Túpac Amaru and took the name of Túpac Amaru II, it became prohibited by law to perform any play about the death of the Inca king. Túpac Amaro called himself Inca, Señor de los Césares y Amazonas and tried for many years to be registered as a direct descendant of Túpac Amaro I. At his violent execution in 1781, his son sent out a fierce cry that proclaimed the death sentence of Spanish domination in South America. Thus, the pain of the victims is connected directly with resistance. Today, the tradition of plays about the death of the Inca king is still alive in festivals in the Andean Region in Peru and Bolivia—for instance, in Potosí, Oruro, and Junín Huancayo, Sapplanga (Wachtel 1972, 71f); (Abercrombie 1992, 286); (Garcia Pabon 1992, 225).

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he addresses them (Lara 1993b, 53). The priest Waylla Wisa addresses his king this way: Venerado señor y poderoso Atau Wallpa, Inca mío, El Sol excelso, nuestro Padre Que alumbra al mundo, bien te guarde. (Lara 1993b, 57) (Honorable and powerful King Atau Wallpa, my Inca May the excellent Sun, our Father who shines upon the world, preserve you).

He constantly calls Atau Wallpa ‘soberano mío’ (‘my sovereign’), ‘poderoso’ (“powerful”), or he evokes the ancestors: ‘Venerables antepasados/Mis Incas siempre recordados […]’ (‘Venerable ancestors/my Incas who are always remembered’) (Lara 1993b, 61). Atau Wallpa calls the priest: ‘Muy amado Inca Waylla Wisa, señor que sabe dormer’ (‘My beloved Inca Waylla Wisa, the man who knows how to sleep’), and ‘mi primo hermano’ (‘my first brother’) and ‘hábil mago’ (‘able wizard’) (Lara 1993b, 71). All these words of praise are repeated in some form at every address. However, it is not only the form of address among the ruler and his closest family and friends that is so polite. The respectful manner of address is repeated across all social layers. People at a lower level will be addressed almost as politely as one would address the emperor. When the priest Waylla Wisa is asked by Atahualpa what the ‘cloth’ (chala) that the Spanish are looking at (paper, which is the Bible, Aquinas or the infamous Requirimiento) means, he is bewildered, and he asks Sairi Túpaj in this polite manner: Dilectísimo Sairi Túpaj Mi primo hermano El sol que purifica y luz da al mundo Nuestro padre te guarde (Lara 1993b, 81) (Highly beloved Sairi Túpaj My first brother May the sun who shines on the world Our Father guard you.)

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Before he can hear what the case is about, Sairi Túpaj answers in the same manner: A tí lo mismo, Waylla Wisa, Máximo sacerdote, Padre mío, padre mío (Lara 1993b, 81). (The same to you, Waylla Wisa High Priest My father, my father).

The respect at the highest level filters through to the lowest levels. Thus, the Inca society is shown to be ruled by power and friendly, respectful communication and deliberation. This is in contrast with the depiction of Francisco Pizarro, who is depicted as a greedy and impatient conquistador who rushes into violent actions without thinking about the consequences. Seen from today’s perspective, the endless repetitions of respectful addresses may seem unnecessary and tiring, but repetition not only steers the forms of communication but seems ingrained into all practices of Inca society. When Waylla Wisa sleeps very heavily, he is only woken up after four attempts, one after the other: first the princesses, then Sairi Túpaj, then Chalkuchima, and finally Khiskhis. When Atau Wallpa does not understand the meaning of a piece of paper with writing, he enquires about it to Waylla Wisa, who asks Sairi Túpaj, who asks Challcuchima, who asks Khiskis, who asks Atau Wallpa’s son Inkaj Churin. This form of repetition serves not only to demonstrate a power structure; it also serves as a memory device both for the players and the audiences (Cornejo Polar 2016, 59–60). There is an interesting and less acknowledged side effect of repetition in the play. If you pay attention, the repetitions create an ironic mirror effect that undermines the purely edifying aspects of repetition. Remarkably, this effect is especially connected to the repetition of signs of insecurity— namely the repetition of the phrases that include one or another form of the word ‘maybe’ such as in the often-repeated sentence ‘Acaso tú no sabes…’ (‘Maybe you do not know…’). The first time we hear this sentence is when Waylla Wisa wants to tell Diego de Almagro how great his ruler, Atau Wallpa, is:

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¿Acaso tú no sabes Que es Atau Wallpa, el único señor, El señor poderoso? ¿Acaso tú no sabes Que él es el único que incluso puede Con el Sol y la Luna? ¿Acaso tú no sabes Que las montañas y los árboles Y todos los seres vivientes su voluntad acatan? ¿Acaso tú no sabes Que com su fiero y dócil anutara Suele hacer devorar muchedumbres enteras? (Lara 1993b, 73–75) (my emphasis). (Maybe you don’t know that Atau Wallpa is the only ruler, the powerful ruler? Maybe you don’t know that he is the only one who can speak with the Sun and the Moon? Maybe you don’t know that the mountains and the trees and all the living beings bow to his will? Maybe you don’t know that with his wild and domesticated dog he usually lets multitudes of people be devoured?) (my emphasis)

Four times, the sentence ‘acaso tú no sabes’ is repeated. The repetition here has an ascending, dramatizing effect that makes the humble and polite question sound increasingly like a threat. Despite the friendly tone, the repetition serves to heighten the power of Atau Wallpa. The repetition of the sentence “acaso no sabes” is not an isolated phenomenon. Later in the play, the warrior Túpaj uses the same sentence twice to ‘ask’ Francisco Pizarro whether he knows that Atau Wallpa is the only ruler and that he is the owner of the sacred items he is holding: nails and snakes of gold (Lara 1993b, 99). The repetition of the sentence in these two scenes builds up audience expectation for the most important scene in which Atau Wallpa faces Pizarro using the exact same formulation: ‘¿Acaso tú ignoras que de mi voluntad depende todo…’ (ibid. 111) (‘Maybe you do not know that everything depends on my will…’) (my emphasis). Seen in the light of the previous uses of the phrase, the threatening intonation cannot be ignored by the audience.

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When, at the very end of the play, the allegorical figure of Spain repeats the ‘maybe’-phrase three times in his response to Pizarro, this creates a rhythmic echo chamber that works in support of Atau Wallpa. Spain reproaches Pizarro in this way: ¿Acaso no viste que en su país gobernaba? ¿Tú no escuchaste acaso su acento siempre reposado? Era como una canción de alegría ¿Acaso tú no viste su palacio exornado de oro? (Lara 1993b, 145) (my emphasis). (Maybe you did not see that he governed in his land? Maybe you did not hear his always tempered voice? It was like a song of happiness Maybe you did not see his palace clad in gold?).

In this theatrical and ironic passage, Spain sounds like the Inca ruler and he filters his moral reproach through obviously rhetorical questions. The resulting image is of a happy, strong and peaceful Inca empire destroyed by an ignorant Spanish conqueror. This image has Lascasian connotations. It is significant that, when Pizarro presents the head of Atau Wallpa, dripping with blood, to Spain, he is downright disgusted. Spain does not see the head as a trophy but as forensic evidence of a crime. Spain despises Pizarro and calls him an abject traitor (‘abyecto traidor’ ibid. 145), very strong wording that seems to imply that Pizarro is expelled from the body of the Spanish empire as a common criminal. The allegorical figure of Spain here does what the Indians in Carvajal’s play asked the figure of Death to do in vain: that is, punish the brutal conquerors. Spain assesses the guilt of Pizarro by judging the forensic evidence presented to him; and, remarkably, he does it by mimicking the Indians’ grammar of insecurity, which, at this point in the drama, has become a threatening sign of resistance. Though this drama is not a carnival as such, it has a clear resemblance to the carnivalesque form in the way that it dethrones the conqueror, the way it draws on public, repetitive and oral forms of performance (e.g. of mourning) to do it, and the way it explores the physicality of death to insist on the equality between the conquistador and the conquered. In contrast to Carvajal’s play, this Indian play does not invite laughter, but it

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insists on an embodied form of common sense, creating it through repetitions, and mirror effects between characters, who are supposed to be in opposition.

The Carnivalesque Resistance in the American Atahualpa Plays The Tragedy of Atawallpa’s Death ends with the vindication of the Indian cause; but, of course, the execution of Pizarro does not end colonialism, and one could argue that the primary event in the play is not the death of Pizarro but the death of Atahualpa. The play is much more about defeat than about vindication, as its title indicates. As mentioned previously, this version of the play, edited by Jesús Lara, is only one of whole series of plays about the murder of Atahualpa, plays that have been performed in different forms from the early colonial period until today. Seen from the outside, it is puzzling why the depiction of defeat is such a popular topic in the plays, which were created and enacted by the Indians themselves. Many of the other plays about the death of Atahualpa with which we are familiar offer even fewer signs of vindication than this version by Jesús Lara. Of course, the performance of defeat makes it possible to expose the Spanish conquistadors as brutal wrongdoers and, just as Las Casas did in his Brevísima relación, denounce the violence. But it also exposes the Indians’ victimhood. The death of Atahualpa was not only a symbol of the destruction of an empire but of a whole world order. Why would a people continue to reenact the trauma of such an event? Several answers might be possible, and they are all related to what I would call carnivalesque effects. First of all, the plays allow for a dynamic process of reinterpretation. Each play varies and provides its own, new interpretation of the event, including how Atahualpa was killed. In some plays, he is garroted; in others, he is decapitated, drowned or shot. In some plays, his entrails are eaten by a condor. As Cornejo Polar has argued, all these versions are true since Atahualpa is not only a man but a whole people (Cornejo Polar 2016, 64). Making doubts about the defeat public and open to interpretation inscribes it into a dynamic history and transforms it into a proper and manageable heritage. In this way, just as it happens in the carnival, renewal of the Indian tradition passes through death.

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Second, dramatizing the defeat through a demonstration of the execution of the king serves to collectivize trauma; it allows for a collective mourning process. Historically, in the Andean region, this mourning process was orally performed and connected with the celebration of the kings and the continuity of Incan culture (Osorio 2008, 293). The orality and topic of the dramas (the death of a king) link them to earlier Indian traditions of performance in connection with the death of a king. Third, the plays show not only the actual defeat (the execution of Atahualpa), they also show the conquest as a violent usurpation. It is not only the Indians who suffer from an epistemological crisis. In fact, the play demonstrates that there is a conflict between the Spaniards’ way of knowing, which is based on writing, and the Indians’ way of knowing, which is based in an oral culture. In Lara’s version of the play, the Spaniards do not actually speak. Their lips move without producing any sound. We only know what they say through the translator, Felipillo. Felipillo is a historical person. According to Inca Garcilaso, he was an extremely bad translator, and Garcilaso almost blames the whole defeat of the Incas on his poor translations, which created tension among the Spanish and the Indians (Garcilaso de la Vega 1960, Vol. III, 66). Thus, at the heart of the conquest is a fatal miscommunication. The fact that the Indians use the word ‘maybe’ 34 times indicates that they harbor doubt about the enemy and allow it to be voiced instead of rushing into military warfare as a defense mechanism. Contrary to historians’ accounts, which typically focus on the facts of war and strategic balance, the theatricality of this play allows an exploration of the uncertainty of the losing party.

A Carnivalesque Denunciation of Violence and Defense of Collective Rights Both the Spanish play by Micael de Carvajal and the Indian play Tragedy of Atawallpa’s Death demonstrate an interest in understanding the conquest and colonialism from the Indian point of view, and both of them do it in a carnivalesque form that fosters a ritualistic and collective form of resistance. Whereas human rights in a modern context are individualized, the dramas show the strength of collectivizing resistance and rights claims. Both dramas establish rights through an embodied common sense. Given the enormity of the crimes to which they have been exposed and the fact

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that, while speaking, they are subjects of the Spanish crown, the Indians expose the inefficiency of pure rationality to voice resistance. Instead of reporting on the crimes in a rational narration, they list the crimes as material facts or present them on stage as pure materiality—for instance, ‘showing’ cut-off fingers and the bloody head of the Incan king. The body parts become subjects who speak about the crimes. In order to support the presentation of material evidence rhetorically, Carvajal’s play uses the egalitarian form of danse macabre and the tragedy about Atau Wallpa uses a ritualistic, repetitive form of expression. Both these forms collectivize the agency of the victims and insert it into older folkloric traditions. Both plays have connections with the Corpus Christi festivals and with the carnival. In the literary history about human rights abuses and slavery, there has been a dominating interest in retrieving individual and autobiographical stories about the crimes. Since these stories do not exist in abundance, we have to look to other forms of discourse that can give voice to the victims. The advantage of collective, carnivalesque literary forms of theater is that they immediately frame rights as political. The carnival invites a public form of mourning and resistance that does not shy away from the atrocity of the crime but investigates its status and meaning for a whole people.

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Garrido, Francisco, and Catalina Morales. 2019. Displays of violence and power at the edge of the empire: Provincial trophy heads during Inca times. Latin American Antiquity 30 (3): 606–623. https://doi.org/10.1017/laq.2019.48. Hanke, Lewis. 2002. The Spanish struggle for justice in the conquest of America. Southern Methodist University Press ed. Dallas, Tex: Southern Methodist University Press. Itier, César. 2001. Visión de los vencidos o falsificación? Datación y autoría de la tragedia de la muerte de Atahuallpa. Bulletin de l'Institut français d'études andines 30 (1): 103–121. https://doi.org/10.4000/bifea.7367. Jáuregui, Carlos. 2006. Apetitos coloniales, salvajes críticos y razón de imperio en las Cortes de la muerte (1557). Bulletin of the Comediantes 58 (1): 103–140. Jáuregui, Carlos A. 2008a. Introduction: The conquest on trial: Caravajal’s complaint of the Indians in the court of death. In The conquest on trial: Carvajal’s complaint of the Indians in the court of death, ed. Carlos A.  Jaurequi, 1–54. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. ———. 2008b. Complaint of the Indians in the court of death [Scene XIX of The Court of Death], 1557. In The conquest on trial. Carvajal's complaint of the Indians in the court of death, ed. Carlos A. Jaurequi , 57–115. University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press.Smith-Soto, Mark Knighton, Tess, and Alvaro Torrente. 2007. Devotional music in the Iberian world, 1450–1800: the villancico and related genres. Aldershot, Hants: Ashgate. Lara, Jesús. 1993a. Estudio preliminar. In Tragedia del fin de Atawallpa, ed. Jesús Lara, 11–48. Buenos Aires: Ediciones del Sol. ———. 1993b. Tragedia del fin de atawallpa atau wallpaj p uchukakuyninpa wankan. Buenos Aires: Ediciones del Sol. Lavallé, Bernard. 2004. Francisco Pizarro : biografía de una conquista, Travaux de l'IFÉA. Place of publication not identified. Institut français d'études andines Instituto de Estudios Peruanos Embajada de Francia en el Perú. Lehmann, Hans-Thies. 2006. Postdramatic theatre. London: Routledge. Leiboff, Marett. 2020. Towards a theatrical jurisprudence, space, materiality and the normative. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. León-Portilla, Miguel. 1964. El reverso de la conquista : relaciones aztecas, mayas e incas, El legado de la América indígena. México: Joaquín Mortiz. Lope de Vega, Félix. 1999. Las cortes de la muerte. Alicante: Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes. López-Baralt, Mercedes. 2016. Para decir al Otro : literatura y antropología en nuestra América. Frankfurt am Main: Vervuert Verlagsgesellschaft. Mac Cormack, Sabine G. 1988. Atahualpa y el libro. Revista de Indias 48: 184. Mades, Leonard. 1968. El auto de “Las cortes de la muerte” mencionado en el “Quijote”. Revista hispánica moderna 34 (1/2): 338–343. Maravall, Jose Antonio. 1986. Culture of the baroque: Analysis of a historical structure. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

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Mata Induráin, Carlos. 2016. Las cortes de la muerte, auto sacramental atribuido a Lope de Vega, y el episodio cervantino de la carreta de la muerte (Quijote, II, 11). Alpha (Osorno, Chile) 43 (43): 219–231. https://doi.org/10.4067/ S0718-­22012016000200015. McKendrick, Melveena. 2002. Playing the king: Lope de Vega and the limits of conformity. Reprint ed, Colección Támesis. Serie A, Monografías. Vol. 182. London: Tamesis. Menéndez Peláez, Jesús, José Miguel Caso Gonzales, José María Martínez Cachero, and Ignacio Arellano Ayuso. 1995. Historia de la literatura española. Madrid: Everest. ̂ Murúa, Martín de. 1946. Historia del origen y genealogía real de los Reyes InGcas del Perú, Biblioteca “Missionalia Hispanica”, 2. Madrid. Ortega y Medina, Juan A. 1955. El indio absuelto y las indias condenadas en las “Cortes de la Muerte”. Historia Mexicana 4 (4): 477–505. Osorio, Betty. 2008. La ejecución de Atahuallpa: Símbolo andino de colapso y resistencia. Romance Quarterly 55 (4): 292. Pérez-Amador Adam, Alberto. 2011. De legitimatione imperii Indiae Occidentalis : la vindicación de la Empresa Americana en el discurso jurídico y teológico de las letras de los Siglos de Oro en España y los virreinatos americanos, Parecos y australes, Ensayos de Cultura de la Colonia. Vol. 5. Frankfurt am Main: Vervuert Verlagsgesellschaft. Poma de Ayala, Felipe Guaman. 1980. Nueva corónica y buen gobierno, Biblioteca Ayacucho, 75–76. Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho. Rennert, Hugo Albert. 1963. The Spanish stage in the time of Lope de Vega. (New). ed. New York: Dover. Rey, Pepe. 2007. Weaving ensaladas. In Devotional music in the Iberian world, 1450–1800: The villancico and related genres, ed. Álvaro Torrente Tess Knighton, 15–51. Hampshire/Burlington: Ashgate. Rico, Francisco, A.D. Deyermond, Francisco López Estrada, Bruce W. Wardropper, José Caso Gonzáles, Iris M. Zavala, José-Carlos Mainer, Víctor G. de la Concha, Domingo Ynduráin, and Fernando Valls. 1980. Historia y crit́ica de la literatura española, Páginar de filologia. Barcelona: Editorial crit́ica. Rodriguez-Puertolas, Julio. 1968. La literatura del siglo XV y las cortes de la muerte. Revista de Literatura 33 (65): 103. Ruiz, Teofilo F. 2017. Spanish society, 1348–1700. 2nd ed. London: Routledge. Schauffler, David. 2019. The King’s four bodies. Kantorowicz, Schmitt, Henry, and Hal. In The body in history, culture, and the arts, ed. Aleksandra Musiał Justyna Jajszczok, 161–171. New York: Routledge. Scott, James Brown. 2000. The Spanish origin of international law : Francisco de Vitoria and his law of nations. Union, N.J: The Lawbook Exchange. Seed, Patricia. 1991. "failing to marvel": Atahualpa's encounter with the word. Latin American Research Review 26 (1): 7–32.

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Vallejo, Patricio. 1997. El teatro político y la figura del Inca: El barroco en los albores del teatro quiteño colonial. Kipus (Quito, Ecuador) 7: 77. Varela, Consuelo. 2004. "Las Cortes de la Muerte", ¿primera representación del indígena americano en el teatro español. In Humanismo y tradición clásica en España y América II, ed. J. María Nieto Ibáñez, 333–349. León: Universidad de León, Servicio de Publicaciones. Wachtel, Nathan. 1972. La vision des vaincus : Les Indiens du Pérou devant la conquête espagnole, 1530–1570. Paris: Bibliothèque des histoires. Weizman, Eyal. 2010. Forensic architecture: Only the criminal can solve the crime. Radical Philosophy 164: 9–24.

CHAPTER 5

Tragicomic Theatricality: Forensic Presentism and a Dual Vision of Rights in Lope de Vega’s The New World Discovered by Christopher Columbus

Tragedy mixed with comedy And Terence with Seneca, tho it be Like another minotaur of Pasiphae, Will render one part grave, the other ridiculous; for this variety causes much delight. Nature gives us good example, for through such variety it is beautiful —Lope de Vega (1914, 30)

Approximately one hundred years after the conquest, the greatest Spanish playwright of the time, Félix Lope de Vega y Carpio (1562–1635), wrote a drama about the conquest that was almost forgotten until the twentieth century when suddenly it became essential for any investigation of the

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 K.-M. Simonsen, Slavery and the Forensic Theatricality of Human Rights in the Spanish Empire, Palgrave Studies in Literature, Culture and Human Rights, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31531-2_5

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Spanish perception of the conquest.1 Lope de Vega’s tragicomedy The New World Discovered by Christopher Columbus (El nuevo mundo descubierto por Cristóbal Colón, hereinafter El nuevo mundo), written approximately during 1596–1603 (Dixon 1992, 250),2 dramatizes Columbus’ adventurous project, his travel across the Atlantic, his encounter with the Native Americans, and the establishment of the first colony in America. It also shows how Columbus returns triumphantly to Spain to present gifts from the New World to the Catholic monarchs (reyes católicos): King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. Lope de Vega wrote three plays about the conquest and colonization of America,3 but only in this first drama is he concerned with the first encounter and all the insecurities of that moment. The drama is a history play, produced with the didactic aim of enlightening Spanish audiences about an important historical event of national interest. It is framed by a historico-religious epistemology. As Elaine McDermott Bunn has explained, in many of Lope de Vega’s history plays, there is a “dramatic compatibility between religious and historical patterns” (Bunn 2011, 37). The play was written in a period of political crisis in Spain and was probably meant to portray a former period of glory in 1  A shorter version of this chapter has been printed under the title of “Natural Rights and Power in the Spanish Comedia after the Conquest” in The Routledge Companion to Literature and Human Rights, ed. by Alexandra Schultheis Moore and Sophia A.  McClennen (Simonsen 2016). 2  The play is normally dated 1596–1603 or 1598–1603, and was probably staged for the first time on 23 April 1599 (Lope de Vega 2003, xix–xx). All quotations are from the bilingual edition by Robert M. Shannon (Lope de Vega 2001). I shall indicate when the translation is not by Shannon but my own or Kenneth Stackhouse’s. 3  The other two are Arauco domado por el Excelentísimo Señor D.  García Hurtado de Mendoza (1598–1603), which is about D.G.  Hurtado’s fight against the Araucanians in northern Chile, and Brasil restituido (1625), which is about the recapture of the Brazilian city of Salvador de Bahía from the Dutch. The scarcity of literary texts dealing with the encounter with the New World has often been noted. The Golden Age includes up to 10,000 works. Of these literary works, Miguel Zugasti lists twenty-four about the conquest and the Indians (in “Notas para un repertorio de comedias indianas del Siglo de Oro” (1996), quoted in (McGrath 2018, 214). David McGrath adds another four works, which raises the total to twenty-eight (McGrath 2018, 214). Susan Castillo notes that many other types of semi-literary texts circulated. In the period from 1493 to 1497, she registers “18 texts dealing with the discoveries of Columbus.” After that, there is a proliferation of “actual theatrical performances and the dissemination in print of dramatic dialogues representing interactions between Europeans and natives [which] enabled both groups to attempt to decode each other’s (often inexplicable) behaviour […]” (S.P.  Castillo 2005, 21). And she continues: “Scenic or textual performance was often the arena in which colonial difference was enacted, and in which the most controversial issues of the day were debated” (S.P. Castillo 2005, 21).

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order to strengthen the Spanish Crown and the unity of Spain. It depicts an encounter with the exotic ‘other,’ but it also draws on the genre of the Spanish honor play, which means that, to some degree, the indigenous people are seen through the filter of Spanish moral codes (M.R. Castillo 2009, 49). Some critics call it a propaganda play, but it also investigates the moral grounds of the conquest critically. As Teresa Kirschner argues, the drama must be understood in the context of the debate between Bartolomé de Las Casas and Ginés de Sepúlveda fifty years earlier, which was still fresh in the minds of Lope’s contemporary audience (Kirschner 1998, 97). The play may be seen as a literary parallel to Las Casas’ account Brevísima relación de la destruición de las Indias, discussed in Chap. 3. Like Las Casas, Lope de Vega is intensely occupied with the legitimacy of the conquest and the violence of Spanish conquerors in America. In the play, he incorporates an allegorical courtroom scene to ‘test’ its legitimacy. And, like Las Casas, his interest in the indigenous people is not cultural or anthropological.4 He is primarily interested in their position as moral and political beings and how they interact with the Spanish empire. However, as opposed to Las Casas’ spectacular atrocity tale, which is primarily meant to persuade the audience of the horrors of crimes already committed, Lope de Vega’s play is an example of what could be called forensic presentism. The play allows the audience to witness ‘criminal acts’ as they are committed. In the historical reenactment, the audience sees how the Conquest develops from Columbus’ first ideas of capturing new land and the initial events of the Conquest to the conflicts and ideological challenges of early colonialism. The audience witnesses the time before, during, and after the ‘crime,’ the crime being in this case the whole conquest including not only the violent oppression of the indigenous population but also, as I shall argue, the ideological defense of oppression. As mentioned above, the play’s reception is extremely divided. Some critics see it mainly as a propaganda play, written to celebrate Columbus and legitimize Spain’s conquest. In the words of Pérez-Amador, it has the clear ambition of restoring honor to Columbus, who had been accused of illegitimate self-enrichment and creating a national myth of Spanish glory

4  It is uncertain whether Lope de Vega read Las Casas’ work, but he would most certainly have been familiar with his arguments.

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(Pérez-Amador Adam 2011, 326).5 Robert M. Shannon claims that all the conflicts are “subordinated to the portrayal of the messianic mission” (Shannon 1989, 44). Jack Weiner has argued that, since Columbus is depicted as a man of peace and the Indians are swayed by the power of the cross, the conquest is not depicted as a violent warfare but as a “conquista spiritual” (Weiner 1984, 69–70). Delys Ostlund says that the local king, Dulcanquellín, is described as a tyrant, a cannibal, and a worshipper of the Devil, which legitimizes the Spanish conquest (Ostlund 1997, 86). John Brotherton even claims that Lope de Vega’s distorted portrait of the indigenous people is an “act of genocide” with the pen (Brotherton 1994, 37). Other critics note that, beneath the obvious official propaganda, the play contains strong anti-imperialist aspects. Allen Carey-Webb regrets that the “conflictive, disruptive or, even subversive ideas” of the play have been overlooked (Carey-Webb 1992, 427). Luis Hernán Castañeda argues that the play has an anti-imperialistic, counter-epic perspective (“una perspectiva contra-épica y antiimperial” (Luis Hernán 2010, 35). Ivan Cañadas argues that it “retains a subversive charge, antagonistic to Spanish imperial claims” (Cañadas 2005, 82). Contrary to those who see Columbus as “a man of peace,” Allan Madera claims that the Columbus in the play is “far from heroic”—he manipulates the Spanish kings, and the Spanish conquerors are “deeply flawed actors” (Madera 2016, 17). Therefore, Lope “characterizes both Columbus and Spain in a manner that belies human triumph” (Madera 2016, 17). According to Madera, even the Catholic kings are blinded by an unholy “hunger for glory” (Madera 2016, 18). The problems of the conquest are very much incarnated in certain characters and specific actions; but, according to Carl Austin-Wise, Lope de Vega’s criticism of the conquest cannot be limited to them since the play reveals that the Spanish knowledge system is a failure when it comes to understanding what the New World presents to them (“el fracaso de los sistemas de conocimiento”) (Wise 2015, 131). In this chapter, I argue that one of the reasons for the divided reception is to be found in its ambiguous genre. The play is formally an anti-­ Aristotelian comedia, that is, a Spanish tragicomedy, written in accordance with Lope de Vega’s ‘rules’ for the new drama as they were later presented 5  “[…] el esfuerzo emprendido en esta comedia de restaurar el honor del almirante Colón, acusado de enriquecimiento ilícito” And, he explains that in the play, there is “un claro afán de crear una mitología nacional” (Pérez-Amador Adam 2011, 326).

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to the Royal Spanish Academy in 1607 or 1608 (García Santo-Tomás 2012, 43) and published in Arte nuevo de hacer comedias (1609) (The Art of Making New Comedies (Lope de Vega 2012), (hereinafter Arte nuevo)).6 In tragicomedy, the tragic and the comic are brought together and made to interact in ways that allow a “wide range of interpretative options” (Foster 2016, 11). The play’s tragicomic mode and its dual scenic structure allow the audience to see the conquest from the side of both the ‘perpetrators’ and the ‘victims’; it demonstrates not only the Spanish imperial power in all its strength but also the power and the potential agency of the oppressed. It is a bit like watching a tennis game, except that in Lope de Vega the game is a bloody business, and the moral stakes are much higher. The tragicomic mode also helps Lope de Vega to simultaneously demonstrate the symbolic system of moral and religious codes behind the conquest and the flaws and vulnerability of that system. In a truly paradoxical, baroque fashion, the drama insists on both the glory of power and its deconstruction from within. The tragicomic mode or genre of the play thus brings the audience into the complex moment of the crime and invites a critical investigation of the hierarchical relation that allows the crime to take place at all. I shall first provide a brief summary of the play, focusing on the way the drama celebrates the conquest as a holy mission; Conventionally, a tragicomedy incorporates tragic elements but ends with a happy end, but as I’ll show, even its ending is undercut by tragic sentiment, and it is only superficially happy. It is a baroque harmony in the sense, explained by José Antonio Maravall: a “harmony of contraries masked” (Maravall 1986, 157). I’ll present the Spanish version of tragicomedy where the comic and the tragic clash or are superimposed on each other and discuss the tragicomic effects of the first allegorical scene in the play where Providence legitimizes the Spanish conquest. Drawing on Alenka Zupanĉiĉ’s theory of comedy (Zupančič 2008), I’ll analyze two scenes where the Christian 6  Arte nuevo de hacer comedias was originally published in a book of poetry called Rimas (1609) (Lope de Vega 2012, 43). As Hugo Albert Rennert has argued, much indicates that Arte nuevo was written in a light and humoristic spirit (“con cierto aire ligero y humoristico”) and that Lope did not take the task too seriously or reflected too much on what to say (Rennert and Castro 1919, 187). As Melveena McKendrick and others have pointed out, in the Golden Age, genre categories and terms were used in highly inconsistent ways (McKendrick 1992, 78–79). McKendrick calls Lope’s comedias “‘mixed bouquet’ plays” since they combine “comedy, romance and epic” (McKendrick 1992, 99).

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cross visualizes the power of empire in the foreign context of the New World. I’ll argue that the strongest tragicomic effect of the drama is not to be found in the plot but in the spectacular, emblematic moments when Spain legitimizes the Conquest. Finally, I discuss the position of the indigenous people. One important question is whether the interaction between the Spaniards and the Native Americans allows the locals to appear as human and political beings ‘in their own right.’ The protagonist and hero of the play is Columbus. The antagonists are the local king, Dulcanquellín, and his people and the Spanish Conquistadors who do not see the conquest as a holy mission. However, none of the characters are only good or bad. They contain sufficient contradictory elements to create doubt in the minds of the audience as to their moral habitus. Though incorporated into a Christian moral universe with medieval roots, the depiction of the protagonists with their waverings and doubts is significantly modern. The play demonstrates how morality is challenged and shaped by an encounter with other people. It is dependent not only on dogma but also on a social dynamic and individual reflection. The forensic dimension is dramatized through tragicomic scenes of conflict: conflicts between people and between ideological codes of behavior.

Conquest as Holy Mission: A Drama in Three Acts El nuevo mundo is divided into three acts, a novum, which was installed as a rule in Lope de Vega’s poetics Arte nuevo (Lope de Vega 2012, 143). The play begins and ends in Spain. The idea that the conquest is a holy mission is dominant all the way through. Lope de Vega drew especially on two sources: Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo’s Historia general y natural de las Indias (1535) and Francisco López de Gómara’s Historia de las Indias. Both of these sources stress that the Christian mission and evangelization of the pagan aborigines were extremely important to the Catholic monarchs and to Columbus (Shannon 1989, 48–49).7 Lope follows his sources on this point and almost all the changes he made to the historical accounts underline the holiness of the Spanish mission. In the first act, Columbus tries to find financial support for his voyage to find a new world.8 He and his brother (Bartolomé) seek aid from the 7  For a thorough comparison of Lope de Vega’s interpretation of the conquest with the descriptions by Oviedo and Gomara, see Robert M. Shannon’s Visions of the New World in the Drama of Lope de Vega (Shannon 1989, 43–95). For the positive depiction of Columbus, Lope de Vega mainly drew on Oviedo. 8  In the play, it is never mentioned that Columbus tried to find a sailing route to India.

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kings of Portugal, England, and France, but they all refuse to support Columbus. He then turns to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, who, anachronistically and significantly, are called the Catholic monarchs (Reyes Católicos). Trying to persuade them to invest in the venture, he stresses that he is undertaking this huge mission (“grande empresa”) to save souls and not primarily to gain gold or expand the Spanish empire. King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella are persuaded; but, unfortunately, they are caught up in the fight against the Muslims in southern Spain and cannot embark on a new venture. Columbus is frustrated, and we see him alone and doubtful about the project. However, he is revived by the allegorical figure of Imagination, presented as a demi-god, who carries him across stage to face an unusual, spectacular, and allegorically framed courtroom. In this courtroom scene, Christianity acts as defense attorney for the conquerors; Idolatry acts as accuser and claims to be the true possessor of Indian lands. Idolatry is supported by the Devil. Providence is the judge, who ends the scene by deciding in favor of Christianity and in favor of the conquest. At the end of Act I, the Muslim king of Granada (Rey Chico) has given up the fight against Spanish power, and Ferdinand and Isabella are now free to support Columbus’ voyage. A direct link is made between the Christian reconquest of Granada and the conquest of the New World, which clearly adds a Christian aura to the conquest and even makes it into a ‘crusade.’ It is important that all other kings have refused to support Columbus. The king of Portugal calls Columbus a madman (Lope de Vega 2001, I, lines 172–175, 80). The English king Henry VII is incredulous about the project of finding new territory and hints that it is a pure invention of Columbus. In a highly ironic and arrogant reply, Henry VII issues an official renunciation of any right to such a land, should it be found. Bartolomé, who has been in contact with Henry VII, quotes his message: Dice que si algún derecho al mundo que has dicho o hecho, por rey le ha tocado allí, todo lo renuncia en ti para tu bien y provecho. (Lope de Vega 2001, I, lines 574–578, 104) ([…] he said that if he, as king, is entitled to any of the land of which you speak, that he would give it all to you for your benefit and profit.) (Lope de Vega 2001, 105)

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Portugal, France, and England are nations that, in Lope de Vega’s time, had become strong competing imperial powers. The fact that they explicitly refuse to take a risk and invest in Columbus’ voyage clearly adds comparative moral support to the Spanish right to the New World. In the second act, we find Columbus and his crew on board the ship to America. Crossing the Atlantic is risky, and the sailors do not know whether they will ever reach land or even whether there is any land. Food and water are running short. The sailors become desperate and threaten to throw Columbus overboard and return to Spain. The mutiny scene adds drama to the heroic endeavor; but, of course, the audience knows the outcome.9 Friar Buyl and Columbus’ brother Bartolomé help calm the sailors.10 Before the Spanish ship reaches land, we shift location, and the playwright provides a remarkably long scene with Native Americans. The audience is introduced to the local king, Dulcanquellín, just before his marriage to Tacuana, a woman he has abducted from another native king or cacique, Tapirazu. In Dulcanquellín’s welcome speech to Tacuana, he brags about the vast possessions of his kingdom to impress her. The Indians hear the Spaniards arrive. Columbus marks his landing by planting a huge green cross in the sand, naming the island La Deseada (‘the desired’). The Indians run to the beach to see what is happening. The stage here must be divided into two different parts. The audience should be able to see the Spanish ship (or the contours of a ship) in the background (e.g., to the left) and the Native Americans in the front (e.g., to the right), which creates a scenic dual vision.11 During the encounter, the audience should be able to see the reactions on both sides as messengers run back and forth. This specific scene is especially like watching a 9  This mutiny scene is reported by Gonzalo Hernández de Oviedo y Valdés (1535, Vol. 1, 25). Columbus’ Journal does not report a mutiny. On 23 September 1492, the Journal reports that the sailors were worried and started to “murmur” because of a lack of wind and their fear that they would never return to Spain (Columbus and Markham 1893, 28). On 10 October, the Journal says that “the people could endure no longer. They complained about the length of the voyage. But the Admiral cheered them up in the best way he could” (Columbus and Markham 1893, 34). Columbus sees signs of land many days before they reach it, including floating weeds and certain birds and whales. 10  As often noted, it is not historically correct that Father Buyl (or any other friar) participated in the first voyage. The inclusion of a friar here underlines the Christian aim. 11  Since the Spanish theater (the corrales) was divided into several galleries, it is possible for the ship to be shown in the upper gallery or for the sailors to be represented as being in the masts of the ship in the galleries. For an overview of the Principe theater, see Alexander Samson’s and Jonathan Thacker’s A Companion to Lope de Vega (Samson et al. 2018, 42).

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tennis game. In addition, the structure of the scene creates a double layer of perception. The audience sees the discovery, but it also sees the Indians see the discovery. By demonstrating the activity of seeing, it adds a meta-­ reflective layer to the scene, creating what Bradley J. Nelson has called a “minidrama” (Nelson 2010, 87–88). This scopic structure creates an awareness of the emblematic and tableau-like moment of the discovery.12 However, it also makes it easier to ‘identify’ with the Indians, thus dividing our moral attention. The Spaniards succeed in convincing the Indians that they come in peace. Act II ends with a festive common meal. The local king Dulcanquellín orders his men to slaughter four of the fattest servants to welcome the Spanish conquerors. In the last scene, everyone joyfully shouts: “A New World!” However, in the third and last act, problems appear. Columbus has gone to Spain and left the colony in his brother’s hands. The Spanish soldiers and captains are homesick and melancholic. Though they have gold in abundance, they cannot spend it on anything in America. Captain Terrazas tries to convince King Dulcanquellín of the truth of Christianity and the immorality of the local religion. Dulcanquellín is persuaded and ready to convert; but, when he learns that Terrazas has lied to him and seduced his wife Tacuana behind his back and that the Spaniards are treacherous and evil “barbarians” who are not really interested in religion but in stealing gold and women, he and his men kill the Spanish soldiers and destroy the huge Christian cross. The colonial project and the Christian mission seem to have gone completely awry. Instead of peace, colonialism has brought war.13 However, the mission is saved by a miracle: a huge, new cross suddenly sprouts from the ground. Convinced by the power of the cross, Dulcanquellín and his men surrender themselves to the Spanish king and to Christianity. At the end, we see Columbus in Spain again, presenting to Ferdinand and Isabella gifts from the New World: parrots and hawks, bars of gold, and six half-naked and painted Indians. In the last triumphal scene, Columbus is celebrated as a hero and is knighted; he enters with his

 See Bradley J. Nelson for elaboration on this (Nelson 2010, 87–88).  According to Kenneth Stackhouse, Lope took this scene from letters of Columbus and the physician Dr. Chanca, which mentioned a “massacre of the twenty-four Spaniards Columbus left behind on the island of Guanahamí” (Lope de Vega 2003, xxix). 12 13

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banner and logo, and the six Indians are baptized with the Catholic monarchs as godparents. This last scene is historically true, but Lope de Vega adds a fictional element. He has Queen Isabella give the gold to the Church of Toledo to make a monstrance, thus emphasizing the fact that the gold was meant for a holy purpose. The contradiction and conflict between “Gold” and “God”—that is, between the self-interest of the Spanish conquerors and the Crown and the religious mission—is a main topic of the play. In the final scene, this contradiction seems to be laid to rest. “Gold” and “God” are reconciled.14 The baptism of the six indigenous people with which the play ends sends a clear message about the overall Christian character of the conquest. The happy ending seems to suggest that the drama is a comedy—perhaps, even a “comic comedy,” as Florencia Calvo has argued, in which the comic element supports the ideology of power and is used to facilitate a violent subjection of the “other” (Calvo 2007, 291).15 However, I argue that it is more complicated than that. As stipulated earlier, the drama is an early Baroque drama that works with the integration of oppositional elements, and the tragicomic form serves to expose some of these contradictions.

The Spanish Tragicomedy The Spanish form of the tragicomedy is characterized by a conflictive and sometimes extreme blend of the comic and the tragic that produces a highly mixed response in the audience. In his Arte nuevo, Lope de Vega calls the comedy a minotaur, stressing that variety is natural and created to please the audience:

14  As Tzvetan Todorov has argued, it is not necessarily a problem that Columbus, in his conversation, diary, and letters, frequently mentions his wish to find gold since the gold was a means to an end: it helped finance the expeditions that made evangelization possible (Todorov 1992, 10). 15  Speaking about a number of Lope’s dramas in which there is an encounter with the ‘other,’ Calvo writes: “Por su parte, en las comedias del otro escenas cómicas que presentan casi todos los códigos constitutivos de lo lúdico, solamente alimentan la ideología del poder en tanto provocan desde la comicidad un tipo de asimilación violenta del otro” (Calvo 2007, 291).

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Lo trágico y lo cómico mezclado Y Terencio con Séneca, aunque sea Como otro Minotauro de Pasife, Harán grave una parte, otra ridícula, que aquesta variedad deleita mucho Buen ejemplo nos da naturaleza que por tal variedad tiene belleza. (Lines 174–180 (Lope de Vega 2012, 141)) (Tragedy mixed with comedy And Terence with Seneca, tho it be Like another minotaur of Pasiphae, Will render one part grave, the other ridiculous; for this variety causes much delight. Nature gives us good example, for through such variety it is beautiful. (Lope de Vega 1914, 30).

A minotaur is half-man and half-bull, and comedy mixes reason and instinct, civilized reflection and laughter—in unforeseeable ways. One of the most important traits of Lope’s dramaturgy is its endeavor to create surprise. As Lope says, you should not reveal how the events of the drama will end until the middle of the last act or the last scene. The drama must be built on suspense to avoid boredom but also to create a more diversified engagement. Surprising events are not only entertaining; they also provoke reflection. Thus, Lope’s dictum is: “Always trick expectancy; and hence it may come to pass that something quite far from what is promised may be left to the understanding” (Lope de Vega 1914, 34) (“Engañe siempre el gusto, y donde vea/ que se deja entender alguna cosa,/dé muy lejos de aquello que promete,” lines 302–304 (Lope de Vega 2012, 147)). And he continues: “Equivoke and the uncertainty arising from ambiguity have always held a large place among the crowd, for it thinks that it alone understands what the other one is saying” (Lope de Vega 1914, 35) (“Siempre el hablar equívoco ha tenido/y aquella incertidumbre anfibológica/gran lugar en el vulgo, porque piensa/ que él solo entiende lo que el otro dice,” lines 323–326 (Lope de Vega 2012, 149)). Ambiguity is not a side effect of an otherwise serious presentation. It is a dramaturgical intention and part of the theatrical structure. This fact complicates the interpretation; but, in a constructive and substantial manner, it also gives the playwright a way of exploring diversity of opinion.

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Thus, the tragicomic poetics of Lope de Vega differs from other definitions of tragicomedy—for instance, the often-quoted definition by the Italian author Giambattista Guarini, who defended the genre of tragicomedy in his prologue from 1599 to his tragicomic drama Il Pastor Fido. For Guarini, it is essential that you pick the best elements of tragedy and comedy and unite them in a balanced way to create “a third thing” (Guarini 1967, 521). He says: He who composes tragicomedy takes from tragedy its great persons but not its great action, its verisimilar plot but not its true one, its movement of the feelings but not its disturbance of them, its pleasure but not its sadness, its danger but not its death, from comedy it takes laughter that is not excessive, modest amusement, feigned difficulty, happy reversal and above all the comic order […]. (Guarini 1967, 511)

It is important for Guarini that neither the tragic nor the comic is excessive and that the emotional impact of the drama does not create any disturbance in the audience. According to Guarini, the aim of the tragicomedy is not to depress the audience but “to purge the mind from the evil affection of melancholy” (Guarini 1967, 522) or, as he states later, to purge “with pleasure the sadness of the hearers” (Guarini 1967, 524). The author must be selective in his choice of means, so that he creates a consistent whole that pleases. As Verna A.  Foster has also explained, it is important for the mixture of comic and tragic to appear organic, both “in form and feeling” (Foster 2016, 11). But, in Lope de Vega, it is not unusual to see an inorganic clash or superimposition of the tragic and the comic. As Geraint Evans argued, Guarini’s “concept of tragicomedy is of limited relevance to the Spanish comedia”—basically, because the “Spanish tragi-comedy is often darker,” and we often find “greater extremes of laughter and danger” (Evans 2012, 70). Contrary to Guarini’s advice, Lope de Vega does write about a “great action” (“grande empresa”)—namely, the discovery of America—and he creates a verisimilar play that comes very close to the actual events. The drama does not refrain from presenting sadness and death. At the same time, it makes the audience laugh and enjoy funny scenes and witty dialogues. This creates in the audience a mixed feeling that is highly disturbing. In contrast to Guarini, who primarily sought a balanced emotional response, Lope de Vega’s focus on “surprise” and “variety” makes him

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search for an effect of antagonism and contradiction that will create both pleasure and a reflective response in the audience. Due to its ability to work with antagonistic forces, Nancy Maguire has argued that tragicomedy is a political genre (Maguire 1987, 2–3). This is most certainly the case in El nuevo mundo, but in this play, as in other plays and texts of the Spanish Golden Age, politics is always seen through a moral filter. In the words of Alexander A. Parker, all Spanish playwrights are “good theologians,” and Spanish plots are “constructed on the principle of poetic justice” (Parker 1971, 7). For Parker, poetic justice paradoxically and necessarily demands the genre digressions of the tragicomedy (Parker 1971, 8). In a tragicomedy, you need to have both tragic and comic elements, but some see tragicomedy primarily as a form of comedy. John T. Shawcross reminds us that, in the conceptual neologism “tragicomedy,” “tragic” is modal and “comedy” is generic (Shawcross 1987, 13). Accordingly, it is not a drama that combines the tragic and the comic, but a comedy that incorporates tragic elements. This might explain why the Spanish tragicomedy often is called comedia or comedia nueva (new comedy). Tragicomedy has been compared to medieval drama about the death and resurrection of Christ, a drama in which redemption goes through suffering, but, where ultimately, God “will bring good and happiness out of evil and unhappiness” (Shawcross 1987, 24). If we see tragicomedy through the filter of medieval dramas about the death of Christ, it may easily be understood as a happy but conservative genre since, in the end, the spiritual order will be restored. Tragicomedy and la comedia generally (and, more specifically, Lope de Vega’s plays) have been accused of conservatism. Like the medieval mystery plays, they seem to end on a conciliatory note that preserves royal and ecclesiastic power. However, one should be cautious here. In order to decide on the moral and political dimension of the plays, it is necessary to discuss the relationship between the tragic and the comic in more detail. Moreover, as some critics have said, even if comedies with happy endings seemed to dominate Golden Age theater, this does not mean that the theater was necessarily in line with official religious or royal truth. As Melveena McKendrick has observed from a more sociological point of view: if theater was only a means to express the norms of powerful contemporary institutions, why would the king and the church seek to close the theaters down? (McKendrick 2002, 7). Theaters had their own agendas and allowed other visions than the official one. Jonathan Thacker has

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even made the point that the “appeal and power of comedy, if not always the individual laughs, surely stem from the bold stand it dramatizes against the forces of conservatism” (Thacker 2018, 169). In order to understand how to interpret the tragicomic elements, let us have a look at how they are used in the plot and in the symbolic structure of the play.

Tragic Elements in the Comic Plot The structure of El nuevo mundo follows a clear line of development: The exposition of background and moral conflict in Act I (is the conquest legitimate or not?), conflict in Act II (mutiny scene), crisis in the beginning of Act III (conflict with Dulcanquellín, the killing of Spanish captains, and the failure of conversion) to a sudden peripeteia: the conversion of the indigenous people, the return of Columbus, and the final happy ending at the Royal Palace in Spain. The structure seems to indicate alternation between tragic and comic elements but not a mix. It seems as though the tragic elements may be isolated to specific events (e.g., the killing of the Spanish captains) and that the play ends as a comedy. However, there are definite signs of war and tragedy that undermine the happiness. Even if these ominous signs cannot in themselves turn the play into a critical and anti-imperialistic play, they cannot be ignored, and they definitely complicate the interpretation. Though Columbus marks his landing by planting a huge green cross in the sand, the Spanish presence is first announced by “two or three harquebus shots.”16 Hearing these shots, Dulcanquellín, who is interrupted in a fight with Tapirazu, is shocked. He believes that Heaven is falling down and that a war has broken out. He cries out: “May the power of the sun save me! Are the heavens thundering or is Ongol roaring?” (“¡Válgame el poder del sol!/¿Truena el cielo o brama Ongol?”)17 and “So much thunder! So much war! (“¡Tantas truenos, tanta Guerra.”18 While we follow the reactions of the Native Americans, we simultaneously hear the Spanish sailors shout “Land! Land! Land! Land!” (“¡Tierra, tierra, tierra, tierra!”)19 and, later, “Hurrah!” (“¡Hao!”).20  Lope de Vega (2001, II, line 1447, 168–69).  Lope de Vega (2001, II, lines 1448–49, 168–69). 18  Lope de Vega (2001, line 1479, 179–71). 19  Lope de Vega (2001, line 1447, 168–69). 20  Lope de Vega (2001, line 1474, 170–71). 16 17

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When he tries to convert Dulcanquellín, Captain Terrazas gives an impressive speech about the redemption of mankind through the death of Jesus, but he also describes how the good angels threw Lucifer and the rebellious angels out of Heaven with “burning swords of divine justice” (“con espadas ardientes/ de la divina justicia”).21 Since the Spanish people regard the Indian god Ongol as the Devil, the story about the violent expulsion of Lucifer sounds like a threat to oppress or kill every Indian who does not convert. Crusade-like war seems to be linked to evangelization. This is underlined by the allegorical tribunal scene in Act I in which Christianity grounds its right to land in America on the peculiar argument that America originally belonged to the Christian faith and that Christianity was only later usurped by the Devil. Thus, seen from the Christian side, the conquest of America, just like the conquest of Granada, is really a reconquest22 because Indian land is unjustly possessed by the Devil and idolaters.23 If the land was originally Christian, the Christian crusaders have an ancient right to (re-)possess the land. Agreeing with Christianity, Providence says: “Let that which is unjustly gained be uprooted” (“vaya a mal lo mal ganado”).24 Idolatry believes this argument to be a downright injustice and argues that the Spaniards lie about their “holy mission.” The Spaniards, says Idolatry, “spurred on by avarice, and under the cloak of religion […] seek the hidden treasure of silver and gold” (“lo lleva la codicia/a hacer esta diligencia./So color de religion,/van a buscar plata y oro/del encubierto tesoro”).25 Later, Terrazas and other captains will be justly condemned for their greed and immoral behavior, but it is interesting that Providence does not condemn the lust for gold per se. To the protest of Idolatry, Providence simply answers that God will be the judge of that, and then he continues:

 Lope de Vega (2001, III, lines 2621–22, 262–63).  According to Moisés R. Castillo, the idea that the conquest was a reconquest was normal in plays during the period (Castillo, Indios en escena, 43). 23  According to Ingrid Simson, the idea that America was the chosen territory of the Devil after he had been thrown out of Paradise was a common idea in the Golden Age (Simson 2019, 306). 24  Lope de Vega (2001, I, lines 759–760, 114–15). 25  Lope de Vega (2001, I, lines 770–774, 116–17). 21 22

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Si El, por el oro que encierra, gana las almas que ves, en el cielo hay interés, no es mucho le haya en la tierra. Y del cristiano Fernando, que da principio a esta empresa, toda la sospecha cesa. (Lope de Vega 2001, I, lines 776–782, 116) (If He, through the bait of gold, wins the souls of the natives, there is just cause for it in the heavens, so there should be no surprise that there is also a just cause on earth. And since it is Prince Ferdinand who undertakes this enterprise, let all doubts cease.) (Lope de Vega 2001, I, 117).

This argument by Providence is deeply problematic, seen not only from today but also in light of the historical understanding of ius gentium. As mentioned above, the debate about the conquest, which involved Francisco Vitoria, Las Casas, and Ginés de Sepúlveda among others, was still very much in the public memory in late sixteenth century. One of Las Casas’ most prominent recurring arguments against the violence of the conquest was that conversion cannot be won by any other means than peaceful argument, least of all by means of gold, and that no royal power can legitimize immoral behavior. As demonstrated in Chap. 3, Las Casas argues that, even the king must obey the moral law of Christianity, which demands modesty and peaceful conversion. Providence’s dictum that royal authority kills all doubts must have seemed problematic and, in the light of the Spanish violence shown on stage, even ironic. Perhaps Lope de Vega wanted to present royal power and the terrible effects of power at the same time, making the audience reflect on the nature of power? As Sofie Kluge has proposed, the tribunal scene is not the straightforward apology that it seems to be. She argues that it actually forms “the backbone of […] Lope’s problem-oriented depiction of the Conquest” (Kluge 2018, 103). According to Kluge, this is indicated by the fact that the allegorical scene is presented as a dream and “Renaissance writers used the literary dream as an instrument of epistemological inquiry” (Kluge 2018, 105).26 Risk of censorship meant that

26  Lope’s extensive use of dreams on stage has been pointed out by Teresa Kirchner. She argues that it is an example of “theater within theater” (“teatro dentro del teatro”), which has the effect of a mise en abyme (Kirschner 1998, 10).

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criticism of royal power had to be circumscribed and judgment left not to God as proposed by Providence but to the audience. At the time of the performance of the play, the audience had full knowledge of the continued violence and enslavement of the indigenous people, and they had seen conquerors return with their riches to Spain, where they were living a carefree life. Indianos, as these returnees were called, were often criticized for their greed and immoral behavior (Simerka et al. 2003, 76). In the light of this knowledge, the depiction on stage of a noble, disinterested Christian colonialization might have seemed highly ironic. Not all lust for gold was holy. The plot shows the Spanish victory alongside its violence; it demonstrates that this violence exists even in Providence’s judgment and in the Christian tradition. Finally, it is highly ironic that the truth about the violence of the Spanish conquest, a truth that is clearly demonstrated on stage, is placed in the mouth of the Devil. And the description of the most holy and acclaimed truths of Christianity is placed in the mouth of the most villainous character in the play—namely, Captain Terrazas, who is a liar and a hypocrite. For instance, while condemning Dulcanquellín for having abducted Tacuana, he says in an aside: “It doesn’t matter if I preach what I myself refuse to practice” (“Basta que yo le predico/ lo que para mí no escojo”).27 Terrazas, thus, demonstrates a conflict between the social honor he represents (in Spanish, honra) and inner moral honor (honor) (Cañas Murillo 1995, 150). According to John Brotherton, Terrazas is the incarnation of the “conflict between religious intention and genocidal realization” since he is a spokesperson for Christianity and a villain; Terrazas is a Janus-like ‘monster.’ Why did Lope choose to have this person present the most holy truths and not Friar Buyl, who is also part of the mission? It creates a distance to the Christian message and allows for identification with the ‘other.’ The audience is clearly on the side of Dulcanquellín when he cries out: “Kill them! They are not what they claim to be” (“¡A ellos, que no son lo que publican!”).28 The shifting sympathies and the constant, simultaneous insistence on the goodness and the violence of the conquest create a dual vision of the conquest that is tragicomic. During the impressive last scene, which celebrates Spanish glory, the audience must have had the images in their mind of the spectacular and justified killing of all the Spanish captains and  Lope de Vega (2001, III, lines 2378–79, 248–49).  Lope de Vega (2001, III, line 2790, 272–73).

27 28

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soldiers that had just taken place on stage. Though the treacherous Spanish captains and soldiers are exposed as especially immoral beings, the question is whether the immorality can be limited to some captains and soldiers or whether their lust for gold and abuse of power is part of the general Spanish crusade. The fact that the Spaniards use the gold to decorate churches does not remove the problem that they stole it from the indigenous people—often with the use of brutal force. The tragic and violent reality of the conquest is constantly evoked in the play. I therefore argue that the apparent harmony in the closing scene is what José Antonio Maravall called in his description of Baroque culture a “harmony of contraries masked” (Maravall 1986, 157). Maravall explains it in this way: […] making use of the reserves of conservatism that every Platonizing solution includes, the baroque mind affirmed—above and beyond the wars and deaths, deceptions and cruelties, misery and suffering—an ultimate concordance of the most opposite elements, not because it eliminated all those ills but because it reciprocally adapted them, as the human being was adapted to them. Therefore, ultimately, all baroque behaviour was a morality of accommodation […]. (Maravall 1986, 157)

Lope de Vega’s drama is an early Baroque work that clearly demonstrates oppositional forces and then seems to create a harmony between them in the last scene, but it is a harmony that merely ‘glosses over’ the struggle underneath. As Maravall also says about the comedia, following Saavedra Fajardo, there is conservative harmony at the top and dissent at the bottom (Maravall 1986, 153). The audience was meant to sense the reality of both these levels and accept that tragedy was part of that reality even when it appeared to be comic. According to Maravall, they would be good at it since the tragicomic mode was a structural part of Baroque reality (Maravall 1986, 25). In a way, tragicomedy as a genre simply confirms the tragicomic character of the Baroque reality. However, it does so in a reflective way; and, in some specific situations, it becomes clear that it has a strong critical dimension. The clearest example of the critical function of tragicomedy in the play is to be found in the use of an emblematic dual vision. The paradox in the play is that, despite the celebration of the Catholic monarchs and the ideological dominance of Christianity, the doubts about the legitimacy of the conquest arise out of the very language that was supposed to

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support it. In order to demonstrate this, let us have a look at the mix of tragic and comic elements in two of the most emblematic power scenes in the play, both of them involving the cross.

The Tragicomic Cross In Act II, the Spanish conquerors establish their right to the new land by planting a huge green cross in the sandy beach of the island Deseada. The cross is the manifestation of Spanish power and Christian truth, and the play celebrates this inaugural moment just as it has been celebrated numerous times since then in cultural history and art. Erecting the cross is a heavily loaded symbolic act in which the new land is taken into possession. Since Columbus is the heroic protagonist of this act, symbolic power is also bestowed on him. When he returns home with gifts from the New World, he is received by King Ferdinand with the words: Cristóbal, vuestro apellido Os da alabanza, Colón; Que autor de tal redención Algo de Cristo ha tenido. Vos, Cristóbal, como el santo De estos mares ya vecinos, Hoy pasáis los peregrinos En hombros que pueden tanto. (Lope de Vega 2001, III, lines 2867–74, 278) (Christopher, your very name praises you because the author of such an act as the redemption of the Indians could only possess the qualities of Christ. You Christopher, like the saint whose name you bear, have born these pilgrim souls across the seas on your mighty shoulders.) (Lope de Vega 2001, III, 279).

Christianity is inscribed in Columbus’ first name and colonization in his surname.29 Cristóbal Colón (as his name is in Spanish) has a perfect name for an evangelic colonizer, and King Ferdinand likens him with his namesake St. Christopher, who carried Christ across a dangerous river on his 29  The English translation misses the play on the Spanish version of Columbus’ name (Colón) in which colonization seems to be inscribed.

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shoulders to reach a new shore. In a parallel act, Columbus carries Christianity across the Atlantic and plants a green cross in the New World. The fact that the cross is green points to its dynamic character and its resemblance to a live tree. St. Christopher normally carries a staff that, according to Maryrica Ortiz Lottman, can be either a “dead branch with its limbs severed or else a live tree, often a date palm bearing fruit” (Ortiz Lottman 2014, 185).30 Since St. Christopher was an extremely popular saint in contemporary Spain and was celebrated in pictures in churches and religious plays (Ortiz Lottman 2014, 185), Lope was able to rely on the fact that the allusion to St. Christopher would be immediately intelligible to the audience. As Maryrica Ortiz Lottman has convincingly argued, the “iconography of this popular saint unites a number of motifs in the play” (Ortiz Lottman 2014, 185). The iconography turns Columbus into a saint and the huge wooden cross into a living spirituality. Columbus is not just a mariner and adventurer who happens to be Christian. He is the figural incarnation of the fusion of secular and religious power. He is both conquistador and saint. For the Spanish, the cross is the legitimization of their power and the conquest. Yet, while the play draws on this symbolic power, it also demonstrates how easily the cross can be stripped of it and turned into a simple thing, a piece of wood. Stripping authorities and symbols of their power is a very common element of comedy. However, in a very interesting book on comedy, The Odd One In: On Comedy, Alenka Zupanĉiĉ has argued that true comedy shows us not only the undermining but also the restitution of power after the fall. We laugh when “the buffoonish baron who implacably believes in his aristocratic superiority” stumbles and falls into a muddy puddle and shows himself to be only a human body. However, according to Zupanĉiĉ, it is even funnier when, after having fallen, he insists on his authoritative position as if nothing has happened (Zupančič 2008, 30–31). This is exactly what happens in Lope de Vega’s play. 30  In a detailed study of all the allusions to St. Christopher in Lope de Vega’s play, Maryrica Ortiz Lottman argues that links are created between cross, staff (e.g., Moses’ staff), and tree (tree of knowledge but also the tree of the cross, which is to blossom). St. Christopher is always depicted as a giant, and Columbus is described as a tall person, for example, by Bartolomé de Las Casas. According to Lottman, “Lope portrays Columbus as a prophet in the tradition of the Old Testament Moses” (Ortiz Lottman 2014, 213).

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First, we witness the undermining of the spiritual power of the cross. In Act II, the Native Americans see the cross but are unable to understand its meaning. We see them approach it with a mixture of curiosity and skepticism: Tapirazu Tacuana Tap. Dulc. Tap. Dulc.

(Tap. Tac. Tap. Dulc. Tap. Dulc.

Ved lo que han dejado aquí ¿Qué es esto? ¿Es madera? Si. Luego podréla tocar. ¡Toca! Ya la toco; llega. Toca tú: todos tocad; De madera es, en verdad. (Lope de Vega 2001, I, lines 1744–48, 188)

Look what they have left here. What is it? Is it wood? Yes. I’ll touch it. Go on! Touch it! I am touching it! Come closer! You touch it too! All of you touch it! It’s made of wood, indeed) (Lope de Vega 2001, I, 189).)

The Native Americans try to guess the function of the cross and speculate that it is a tree trunk for anchoring boats, a watchtower, or an instrument to chart the course of the sun. When Tacuana suggests that it might be a sacred thing, Dulcanquellín bursts out laughing, believing it to be a joke. The audience is meant to laugh at the Indians’ ignorance; thus, the humor has the effect of ‘mocking the inferior’ and making the people who understand the symbols laugh and feel superior (Billig 2005, 39). However, the laughter is also turned against the cross. The Indians’ reaction demonstrates to the audience that the cross is, in fact, only a “piece of wood.” Stripped of its symbolic power, the cross is literally just a thing, which alienates religion from itself. This humoristic effect is equivalent to the “baron falling into a muddy puddle” effect mentioned earlier. We are reminded of the fact that universal truth is also a material, concrete thing, a fact that may temporarily undermine the power of truth. However, the play takes the ‘joke’ a step further in Act III. After his disillusionment with the Christians, Dulcanquellín tears down the huge

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cross of wood and throws it into the sea. But immediately afterward, a miracle occurs, and a new cross sprouts up in the place of the old: Salga una cruz con música, de donde la otra estaba, muy semejante a ella; suba poco a poco. Dulc. Tac. Tap. Dulc. Tac. Tap.

¡Mas, eschuchad, que reverdece el tronco! ¿Qué es esto, sol divino? Que se aumenta, y va creciendo el arbol. Tened cuenta. Mal hemos hecho en matallos. Vamonos al padre a ver Desde hoy comienzo a temblallos. Hoy palo, el cetro has de ser del rey de aquestos vasallos. Danos otra vez perdón. (Lope de Vega 2001, III, lines 798–2807, 274)

(To accompanying music, a similar cross slowly sprouts up in the same spot where the other had been. Dulc. Tac. Tap. Dulc. Tac. Tap.

Listen! The trunk is sprouting up again! What is happening, divine sun? The tree is growing taller and taller. Look at it! We have done wrong in killing them. Let us go and see the padre. From now on, I shall tremble before the Spaniards. Today, oh trunk, you will be the [scepter of the] ruler of these vassals. Forgive us again (Lope de Vega 2001, III, 275; my inserted translation in parenthesis).)

This miraculous rising of the cross corresponds to the comic situation when the baron, after having fallen into a muddy puddle, gets up and acts as if nothing has happened, insisting on his former authority. According to Zupançiç, this is truly comic because the spectator realizes the artificiality of the grounding of power. In his poetics, Lope de Vega stresses the naturalness of dramatic effects (Lope de Vega 2012, 141–42). The extreme artificial effects that were popular in the Baroque were contrary to his taste. Yet, despite the intention of naturalness, the scene with the cross cannot help but challenge the

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impression of natural immediacy. Having a huge cross sprout from the stage will necessarily seem strange and artificial. As John Brotherton has correctly written, it is a “literally creaking deus ex machina staging device” (Brotherton 1994, 44). This is underlined by Tapirazu’s remark: “Today, oh trunk, you will be the [scepter of the] ruler of these vassals!” The cross is turned into a trunk, which is then turned into a scepter. More than anything, the miraculous metamorphosis demonstrates the arbitrary fluctuation of the symbolic structure. The rising of the cross is supposed to create the sense of godly presence. As Bradley J. Nelson says, it is no longer the king or Columbus trying to persuade the Indians of Christian truth, thereby to pacify them, “it is the cross itself that pacifies the barbarian mob” (Nelson 2010, 87). This demonstrates “the active nature of the emblematic image,” but it also becomes uncanny since the audience senses that the Christian cross is really just a tree trunk that insists on being a cross. What we are witnessing is, in fact, the artificial scaffolding of power. In the very moment that the cross reinstalls itself as a universal force, Lope makes it visible as a mere materiality. This is a truly funny moment. Inspired by Hegel, Alenka Zupančič explains it in this way: In comic consciousness, the substance is not alienated from the self or the subject (as it is in the “unhappy consciousness”), it is alienated from itself, and this is the only way it comes to self-consciousness and to life in the strict meaning of the word. Comedy is not the story of the alienation of the subject, it is the story of the alienation of the substance, which has become subject. (Zupančič 2008, 28)

Comedy exposes the mechanisms of power at power’s most fragile moment, that is, when power tries to substantiate itself in ideal essentialism. Alienation itself becomes the subject. In Zupančič’s view, power is essentially concrete and human when it tries not to be that. Since comedy means an irreparable breakdown of the dichotomy between the ideal and the real, it affects the understanding of both the agency and legitimization of power. When you have realized the artificial scaffolding of power, you cannot simply admire its ‘natural,’ symbolic aura. Referring to Lacan and his reading of Hegel, Zupančič calls this humor a humour fou (a crazy humor) (Zupančič 2008, 39). The humor is crazy because it combines a wild laughter with the recognition of falling. It is interesting that one of the examples of this humour fou given by Zupančič

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(and Lacan) is God’s incarnation in Christ.31 Christ is supposed to fuse the divine and the human, but there is always a risk that the two levels fall apart and, in a dual vision, are shown to be contradictory. The emblem is an important part of Baroque culture—especially, in the theater; and it is often used in the representation of royal, religious, or institutional power. However, as Bradley J. Nelson has argued, rather than stabilizing power, the emblem demonstrates instability of signification. This is particularly visible when emblems are used in a foreign context. A Christian cross, planted in the soil of America and exposed to the wondering gaze of the indigenous people, does not have the same self-evident emblematic position as a Christian cross in the Church of Sevilla. The dynamic spectacle of an interactive encounter activates moral reflection in the audience. This is where comedy acquires a critical function, but it is also where it is marked by a tragic or melancholic mood since this kind of comedy affects the assumed ideological ground of the Spanish audience itself. It is a Baroque moment in which there is an insistence on the force of powerful emblems despite or because of the lack of belief in their force. As José Antonio Maravall has explained, the Baroque is basically tragic (Maravall 1986, 155). It is a period with “wars, famines and plagues, cruelty, violence, and deception […]” (Maravall 1986, 155). But it is also a period in which powerful institutions such as the monarchy and the church are extremely conscious of the necessity for displaying their power in spectacular ways to create admiration by all possible means, including artificial means, to create an effect (Maravall 1986, 233, 241). Some readings of Lope de Vega’s play have claimed that Lope denounces the violence of some of the conquerors but celebrates the holiness of the mission.32 However, as demonstrated, if we look at the way comedy works in the play, this very holiness is undermined from within. 31  Zupančič recounts the Hegelian understanding of the incarnation of God in Jesus. Jesus is not a representation of God but God himself. Ideally, in this incarnation, we are not supposed to recognize the split between a perfect universal truth and an imperfect, fallible man. When God incarnates himself in Jesus, he does so because of a ‘lack’ in the universal itself: “It is only with the concrete that we come to the real spirt of the universal” (Zupančič 2008, 38–39). 32  Delys Ostlund writes, for instance: “While the negative results of the discovery cannot be ignored or condoned, they should not be allowed to detract from the greatness of the evangelization of the Native Americans” (Ostlund 1997, 80). Robert Shannon writes: “While the dramatist has by no means masked his countrymen’s thirst for gold, he has emphasized throughout the play that the spiritual direction of the Conquest is of far greater importance and will, in the end, triumph and stand as Spain’s overwhelming achievement in America” (Shannon 1989, 91–92).

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The inner opposition between the comic and the tragic creates a tension that cannot easily be overcome. Providence may invite the audience to brush away all doubts, but the form of the tragicomedy invites exactly that: doubt. Should the audience trust the miracle and rely on the sanctity of royal power, or should they take the consequences of the artificial grounds of power? Finally, how do these tragicomic effects influence our understanding of the rights of the Indians?

Human Rights and the Democratic Barbarian King: Dulcanquellín As demonstrated in the analysis above, Lope de Vega’s play about the New World uses tragicomic strategies to create a dual vision of power. The dual vision is embedded in the plot, the arrangement of scenes, and in the emblematic scenes. We see the encounter from both sides. This does not mean that the encounter is equal. On the contrary, the inequality is clearly demonstrated, but it does mean that the consequences of oppression are seen from the side of the oppressed. This aspect is most visible in the figure of Dulcanquellín, the local king who, as Robert M. Shannon says in his introduction, behaves in many ways like a Spanish aristocrat (Shannon 2001, 5). Though Lope’s lack of knowledge about Indian cultures is deplorable, the fact that Dulcanquellín is depicted as a worthy ruler with a position similar to a local ruler in Europe makes it possible for the audience to relate to him immediately and understand his reactions to the sudden invasion of a foreign power. It is essential for him to be seen as a ruler in his own right before the arrival of the Spaniards. In all his ambiguity, I would argue, he is the key to decoding the morality of the play and should be seen as a parallel figure—not to the Muslim Rey Chico of Granada with whom he is often compared but with Columbus himself. As several critics have remarked, the Muslim Rey Chico, who is so caught up in a love scene that he cannot go to war, is quite emasculated (Nelson 2010, 88), but this is not the case with Dulcanquellín. He is described as a man of war, capable of violent resistance against the Spaniards. However, he is not only that. I disagree with the reading of Robert M. Shannon, which sees Dulcanquellín exclusively as a war-maker and a tyrant (Shannon 1989, 73), and with Delys Ostlund, who argues that the local ‘prince,’ the cacique Dulcanquellín, is depicted as a tyrant and a worshipper of the Devil, a political leader who “embodies all the vices antithetical to the Christian virtues found in Fernando” (Ostlund 1997, 86).

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When we meet Dulcanquellín, he has just captured Tacuana in a raid on another local ruler called Tapirazu. Like the Spanish invaders, Dulcanquellín is a conqueror; and, like the Spanish captain Terrazas (who is severely condemned in the play), he steals other men’s wives. However, like Columbus and in contrast with Terrazas, he is also a man of peace. This is clearly demonstrated in two scenes. The first scene is the long conversation he has with his stolen wife, Tacuana. Remarkably, it takes up 176 lines in Act II (II, 1152–1328). According to Robert M.  Shannon, Dulcanquellín expresses his admiration for the beautiful Tacuana in a rhetoric similar to the courtly praise of the “dama,” known from the Spanish “courtly love tradition” (Shannon 2001, 5). Tacuana is afraid of the “tyrant” as she calls Dulcanquellín in an aside (II, 1181), but Dulcanquellín keeps talking, trying to make her see him as an advantageous party: he is a strong and rich king who decides over war and peace (II, 1208). Tacuana is not impressed since what she wants most is her freedom. She says: Dulcán, yo tengo entendida Tu tierra y tu voluntad, Pero no es la libertad Por ningún precio vendida. (Lope de Vega 2001, II, lines 1252–55, 158) (Dulcanquellín, I understand your land and your intentions, but freedom cannot be sold at any price. (my translation).)33

Freedom is here held to be an absolute value that cannot be negotiated. As Tacuana says, a marriage obtained by force cannot be happy. She, therefore, manages to persuade Dulcanquellín that they cannot immediately find pleasure in the wedding bed and that he has to “win her heart” peacefully first. Dulcanquellín answers: 33  Robert M.  Shannon translates: “Dulcanquellín, your land and your desires are well-­ known to me, but one’s liberty is not given at any price” (Lope de Vega 2001, II, 159). In this translation, it sounds as if Tacuana is negotiating the size of the price, not rejecting that freedom can be bought, which is actually what she says. Kenneth Stackhouse translates more correctly here: “Dulcan, I understand/Your land, your love, but freedom has no price” (Lope de Vega 2003, 78). However, I prefer to translate the word ‘voluntad’ as ‘intentions’ instead of love since the word ‘voluntad’ indicates intentions more than reality. Tacuana may certainly feel that Dulcanquellín’s love is not exactly sincere and has more to do with the fact that she is the wife of his enemy and, therefore, an attractive prize.

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Mas porque de mi no creas Que todo bárbaro soy, Mi fe, Tacuana, te doy De cumplir lo que deseas. Servirte quiero, pudiendo Gozarte; mira qué amor, Donde el mismo vencedor Se está a sí mismo venciendo. (Lope de Vega 2001, II, lines 1311–1315, 160) (But so that you not consider me a total heathen (“bárbaro”), I give you my word, Tacuana, to grant your request. I will court you although I want to make love to you now. Behold how love turns victor into vanquished (Lope de Vega 2001, II, 161).)34

I quote the English translation by Robert M. Shannon but I have to note that the translation misses the point stressed by Dulcanquellín that he could violate her if he should choose that (“pudiendo/Gozarte”). It also misses the point that in the final line Dulcanquellín says not only that he is the “vanquished” but also that he has “vanquished himself” (“a sí mismo venciendo”). Dulcanquellín has the power to take Tacuana by force, but instead he restrains himself and opts for a peaceful ‘conquest’ as requested by Tacuana. Tacuana demonstrates a strategy of peaceful resistance in a situation of complete powerlessness. She wins time; and, as we know, she will later try to escape. It is essential that Dulcanquellín is convinced by communication not to be a “barbarian” (“bárbaro,” Shannon translates it as “heathen,” which is not quite correct. The word “barbarian” plays intentionally on his potential brutality) but to build a peaceful relationship. As Luis Hernán Castañeda has argued, by doing this, Dulcanquellín demonstrates that he knows the Spanish code of honor in courtly love (Luis Hernán 2010, 48); but, more generally in the context of the play, he also demonstrates that there is an alternative to violent conquest. The second scene in which Dulcanquellín displays a preference for peaceful means as opposed to force is when he is discussing the possible conversion of the Indians to Christianity with Columbus’s brother, Bartolomé. Bartolomé has just explained to Dulcanquellín that all the images of local gods have to be thrown out of the temple to allow space for the Christian god, who cannot be in the same place as the “Devil.” Dulcanquellín explains that the local belief in Ongol is old and ingrained,  In the Spanish text, it says more literally: “I wish to serve you, though I could enjoy you.”

34

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and he pleads with Bartolomé not to use force but to allow the common people to be persuaded by Christian truth. If they are persuaded, he argues, they will tear down the images of local gods themselves (III, 2540–2559). However, Dulcanquellín also says that it is difficult to be persuaded. After having heard Terrazas explain the mysteries of Christianity: the story of a fallen angel, a boy born by a Virgin, and a man who is resurrected after his death and claims to be the son of God, he exclaims that all this seems “quite difficult and intricate” (Lope de Vega 2001, III, 265). After Terrazas’ explanation of Christianity, we find Dulcanquellín in an interesting and psychologically intense moment of doubt: ¿Qué haré? ¿Dejaré mi Ongol por este Cristo extranjero, Dios-hombre y Dios español? ¿Dejaré luna y lucero, noche, día, cielo, sol? Pero si lo dejaré, aunque la causa no sé de que aventure su luz por esto que llaman cruz, en que su martirio fue. Mas no los puedo faltar; que si de su gusto excedo, temo que me han de matar. Mas, ¿quién busca a Dios por miedo si por amor se ha de hallar? No hay cosa más imposible que dejar la Antigua fe y a la costumbre terrible. Pero si Ongol ángel fue, y Cristo Dios invencible, aquél soberbio impaciente, que castigó su hacedor, por rebelde e imprudente, seguir a Cristo es mejor. (Lope de Vega 2001, III, lines 2706–29, 266–268) (What shall I do? Abandon my Ongol for this foreign Christ, God-man and God-Spaniard? Shall I abandon the moon and the morning star, the night and the day, the sky and the sun?

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But yes, I must abandon Ongol even though I do not understand why the light of the cross on which Christ was martyred is superior to his light. But I cannot fail the Spaniards, for, if I go against their will, I fear they will kill me. But who can find God through fear when he is to be found through love? There is nothing more painful than to abandon one’s ancient faith and evil traditions. But if Ongol was an angel and Christ is an invincible God who punished Ongol, impatient and haughty angel, for his rebellion and impudence, then it is better to follow Christ (Lope de Vega 2001, III, 267–269).)

I have quoted at length to demonstrate the remarkable internal struggle among options in the mind of Dulcanquellín. Here, Dulcanquellín acts neither as a tyrant nor like a Spanish aristocrat. Rather, he is depicted as a modern and reflective Indian king, who represents his people and indigenous religion, considering the pros and cons of conversion. In Dulcanquellín’s mind, adopting the foreign Christian faith appears to be the same as betraying nature itself: the moon and the morning star, the night and the day, the sky and the sun. Ongol is god of the sun, a natural god and in complete contrast with Christianity, which Dulcanquellín sees as a product of a complicated culture (“quite difficult and intricate”). Seen from the outside, pagan culture might seem primitive because of its closeness to nature. Seen from the pagan culture, the artificiality of Christianity marks it as distant from natural roots. Though the Spaniards claim to base their Christian morality on natural law, they seem quite removed from nature. As argued previously, an effort is made in the emblematic tradition to make Christian symbols appear natural—in fact, as natural as nature itself. That the cross is green and the staff of St. Christopher can blossom indicates that the expansion of Christianity should be compared to natural growth. However, in this scene, Ongol is closest to nature, and the Christian religion and even Christ himself seem almost as a hybrid monster when Dulcanquellín says: “this foreign Christ, God-man and God-­ Spaniard?” (“este Cristo extranjero,/Dios-hombre y Dios español?”). Dulcanquellín senses the humour fou of the hybridity of Christ himself (half man and half God), which in itself is a complicated construction. However, when he mentions the conceptual minotaur “God-Spaniard” as a parallel to “God-man,” the problematic sanctification of the conquest becomes obvious.

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Dulcanquellín’s protest against the violence of the Spanish conquerors and his invitation to peaceful conversion is a direct echo of Bartolomé de Las Casas’ denunciation of violence: What good can come from these military campaigns […] how will that nation love us, how will they become our friends (which is necessary if they are to accept our religion) when children see themselves deprived of parents, wives of husbands, and fathers of children and friends? […] Who is there who would want the gospel preached to himself in such a fashion? (de Las Casas 1992, 27)

It is, therefore, very problematic when Dulcanquellín in his interior monologue makes it clear that he is only converting because he is afraid of the Spaniards’ violence (“I fear they will kill me”) and of the power of Christ to defeat Ongol (“Christ is an invincible God who punished Ongol”). Dulcanquellín does not “understand” Christianity; he reacts out of an instinct for survival. This is also the case in the previously analyzed conversion scene. It is mentioned that Tacuana trembles before the cross, which makes it likely that she only trusts in the truth of the cross because she fears it. And the fact that Dulcanquellín keeps calling the cross a “trunk” even after he has converted suggests that he might not have grasped the spiritual value of the cross. As hinted by Shannon, who describes and criticizes the “fluctuation of Dulcanquellín’s religious faith—now pagan, now Christian” (Shannon 1989, 79), Dulcanquellín does not seem fully dedicated to Christianity, and this might seem a moral flaw in him. But I would argue that this is a misreading. It is not Dulcanquellín’s morality that is at fault but the morality of the Spaniards who try to force him to become Christian. For the Spaniards, the compulsion of the indigenous people is indeed a moral problem since it was assumed that, in order for conversion to be legitimate and sincere, it should be a free choice, made on the basis of an inner conviction (de Las Casas 1992, 56). If Dulcanquellín is not sincere in his belief, the conquest has failed as a holy mission, and its whole legitimacy collapses. The fact that Dulcanquellín is depicted as a powerful king, able to be persuaded by peaceful arguments to abstain from what he desires most, one who believes in democratic popular processes, casts a critical light on the Spanish conquest, which is guided by the sword.

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Tragicomic Theatricality and Violent Colonial Encounters As mentioned in the beginning, the reception of El nuevo mundo is highly contradictory. Some see it as a propaganda play; others stress its subversive aspects. In my reading, I do not wish to argue for one or the other. Instead, I have tried to argue that the play, through its tragicomic mode, creates a dual vision of the legitimacy of the Spanish conquest and the rights of the Native Americans. The tragicomic mode, the incongruent depiction of characters, and the surprising clashes between support for and criticism of the conquest are meant to entertain and make the audience reflect, as Lope explains in his poetics (Lope de Vega 2012). The most important point here is not to determine Lope de Vega’s personal view of the conquest but to understand the way he treats the encounter as a situated interaction between different kinds of players: some of them are familiar to the audience (Spanish captains, friars, soldiers, and Columbus) but on foreign ground; others are ‘exotic’ (cannibalistic pagans), but are still treated as people who can be understood since, in some ways, they are similar to Spanish people. According to Moisés R. Castillo, the play is similar to a Spanish honor play. In a critical dialogue with Teresa Kirchner, who has pointed out that Lope demonstrates the humanity of the Indians, Castillo claims that it is exactly by making the Indians similar to Spanish people that it becomes possible to make them subjects under the Spanish throne and open to Christian conversion. Their honorable humanity makes assimilation possible: the foreign is incorporated into the home culture. In Castillo’s words, it is “the integration of the Other into the One” (“la integración del Otro en el Uno” (M.R. Castillo 2009, 59). As mentioned previously, the image of the Indians is not realistic. Lope de Vega mixes stereotypical traits of different Indian tribes and mediates them through the Spanish codes of conduct, inherent in Spanish honor plays. However, if the Indians were only like Spanish people, the play would lose its interest, and no ‘encounter’ would happen. As I have demonstrated, the fascination of the play lies in the complicated interactions between the Spanish and the Indian people. In military terms, Spain is superior; and, as we know, they will win all confrontations with the cities and communities of the New World. However, through comedy, the play demonstrates that the encounter is a challenge to their ideological power. As I have shown, the play is not only a comedy because it has a ‘happy’

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ending or because we laugh at the cannibalistic, illiterate, and primitive Indians. It is a comedy because it exposes the central symbolic structure of the empire to laughter. In some central scenes, such as the scenes with the cross, two forms of laughter happen at once. We may laugh at the American natives, who do not understand the symbolism of the cross, a fact that makes us feel superior; but we laugh even louder and perhaps more bitterly because we see the artificiality of the cross that is normally concealed to us. Thus, the vulnerability of ‘our own’ (the Spanish) ideological symbols is exposed. This gives comedy a critical function, and it turns comedy into tragicomedy. In his book Pacific Performances: Theatricality and Cross-Cultural Encounter in the South Seas, Christopher B. Balme has argued that cross-­ cultural comedy is good at creating a space for the reinterpretation of cultural codes: A particular characteristic of cross-cultural theatricality lies in its unexpected power to transform and redefine signs. This transformative power integral to theater (its ability to make a table into a mountain by a simple word or gesture) is extended to everyday experience in situations of cross-cultural contact. Here gestures or articles of clothing can become theatrical signs as members of different cultures meet and attempt to make sense of each others’ [sic] cultural signs. This kind of theatricality is particularly marked in first contact encounters, […]. As the embodied objects move from one culture to another, they become charged with an excess of divergent meaning. (Balme 2006, 6)

This is exactly what happens in Lope de Vega’s drama. The Spaniards have difficulty controlling the meaning and interpretation of their most valued ideological symbols. And here it is essential that Lope de Vega chooses to depict the Indians as rational human beings. Though they do not possess writing, they live in communities with their own religious beliefs, a political system, and a king—and they are better at intercultural communication than the Spaniards. This becomes obvious in the very first scene of the encounter in which the Indians are better at guessing what the words of the conquerors mean than the other way round. The Indian woman Palca hears the words “rey” (“king”) and “comer” (“eat”) and guesses that the foreigners are referring to King Dulcanquellín and that they want something to eat. She also

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understands it when Friar Buyl asks her to fetch her fellow Indians. The Spaniards hear the word “cacique” and believe it to mean that there is something to eat; they take the word “Dulcan” to mean that the Indians will satisfy all their needs and the second part of his name “quellín” to mean that there must be bread and wine (Lope de Vega 2001, II, lines 1662–83, 182–185). The fact that Lope misrepresents the real Indian cultures does not remove their independent position within the play. Thus, I disagree with John Brotherton when he says: “[Lope de Vega] is negating absolutely their existence within any autochtonous ideological scheme, or indeed any independent ideology or social framework. Ironically, he is committing with the pen that same act of genocide which he apparently has severe qualms about when it is committed with the sword” (Brotherton 1994, 38). As mentioned above, Lope de Vega had not visited America and probably knew little about the different indigenous cultures. His depiction of indigenous culture may seem like a cliché. Yet his depiction of Indians attributes an autonomous political and moral position to them. And one may argue, as I have done in Chap. 3, that political and moral status is more important in a discussion about the legitimacy of the conquest. Columbus is the unquestionable hero of the play, but it is clearly hinted that his alleged good intentions are not representative of the conquest. It is his presumed antagonist within the play, Dulcanquellín, who, despite being a tyrant, gives voice in the clearest manner to pacific and democratic ideals and political rights. As can be seen from its divided reception, Lope de Vega’s drama is not a straightforward defense or criticism of empire, but it is a theatrical exploration of the language of politics in the moment of conquest or encounter. By showing the negotiations of symbolic and linguistic power in the intercultural encounter, Lope de Vega does not only show the mechanisms of politics on stage, but he also demonstrates the inner theatricality of politics that is normally concealed. The intention of the Spanish conquerors is to demonstrate their power through the use of emblems. As Bradley J. Nelson says, using emblems is “a key strategy for simultaneously exploiting and masking the theatrical nature of social and political hierarchies through the production of highly ritualized, intense moments of symbolic production” (Nelson 2010, 13). Tragicomedy is a theatrical form designed to engage the audience in the active and critical interpretation of such

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moments. It does so by creating a dual vision of the emblems and of the parties involved, both the ‘perpetrators’ and the ‘victims.’35 In 1604, Francisco Cascales called tragicomedy a monstrous hermaphrodite and argued that the genre was a crime against “reason, nature and art” (Cascales 1975, Tabla Cuarta). The great Spanish critic of the twentieth century, Ramón Menéndez Pidal, called it a “child born outside the law without any rights within the family of the arts” (“hijo nacido fuera de la ley sin derechos dentro de la familia artística,” Menéndez Pidal 113). Lope de Vega called himself a “barbarian” (“bárbaro”) in his Arte nuevo (Lope de Vega 2012, 151). However, the anomalies of tragicomedy are bound to the complexities of conflictive reality itself. Lope de Vega ends his Arte Nuevo by saying: Oye atento, y del arte no disputes Que en la comedia se hallará de modo Que oyéndola se pueda saber todo. (Lope de Vega 2012, 152) (Let one hear with attention, and dispute not of the art; for in comedy everything will be found of such a sort that in listening to it everything becomes evident. (Lope de Vega 1914, 37).)

Lope de Vega has been criticized for not being realistic in his depiction of the conquest and in his portrait of Columbus and the Native Americans. However, the variation in itself of tragic and comic elements is understood by Lope de Vega as being true to the diversity of life. Tragicomedy is a genre that captures the constant clash between the ideal and the real, and this is a real experience of baroque life or even life in general. As Verna 35  A full analysis of the possible effects of this drama on a contemporary audience would have to consider the special conditions and forms of the Spanish theater in Lope de Vega’s time. Lope de Vega’s plays are written dramas; but, as Laura Mier Pérez has argued, they should not primarily be understood as such but as “spectacles” because that is how they were seen in the period (Perez 2018, 838). The plays were meant to be performed as part of a larger spectacle, a spectacle that is often derogatively referred to as “theatre salad” since the play would be framed by a number of popular performances including loas, entrameses, bailes (dances), and music (Díez Borque 2002, 136). The Spanish theater of the Golden Age was not primarily a place for performing written plays; it was a popular spectacle with roots in carnivalesque and burlesque traditions (Huerta Calvo 1985, 12). Unfortunately, we do not know what loa or entremés or bailes accompanied Lope’s play about Columbus. And, unlike Shakespeare, there is an “almost complete absence of a performance tradition for his plays” (Thacker 2007, 23).

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A. Foster has said, “The tragicomic is the basic pattern of human experience” (Foster 2016, 9). In that way, the tragicomic mode is realistic, and it is apt at exploring real political conflicts through a dual vision. I have argued that Lope de Vega’s political drama is an example of forensic presentism, in which the audience sees the side of both the conquerors and the conquered as the conquest happens. This forces the audience to reflect on the legitimacy of the conquest, its religious foundation, and the status and rights of the Indians. The drama’s dynamic reenactment of the conquest shows the crimes in their factual, ideological, religious, and political complexity as they happen. Regarded as a plot, the drama seems like a comedy with a happy ending, but tragic elements are present everywhere. The religious crusade is accompanied by the sound of deadly weapons. The fact that the local king, Dulcanquellín, only converts to Christianity out of fear circumscribes the glorious celebration of Christian conquest at the end. However, the most complex aspect of tragicomedy is not to be found in the plot but in the duplicity of the spectacular emblematic power structure. The emblems ought to bestow moral significance on the Conquest but that significance is being eroded from within. An analysis of the duplicity of the emblematic structure reveals that the crimes of the conquerors are not only that they kill, enslave, and steal the land and gold of the indigenous people. These crimes were all denounced by Bartolomé de las Casas and they are denounced here again. Their crime is also to be found in their ideological legitimization of these material, physical crimes. The drama criticizes the Conquistadors and the Spanish Crown at their most vulnerable point, when they try to elevate their cruel military campaigns to moral heights and turn what is a moment of political imperialism into a religious crusade. The tragicomic mode is an efficient tool to demonstrate the clash between the ideal, Christian purpose and sanction of the conquest and its bloody and violent reality and to demonstrate both the Spanish and the American sides of the Conquest. Officially, or even privately, Lope de Vega might have supported Spanish imperialism but his work clearly reveals its glory as a “harmony of contraries masked,” as José Antonio Maravall put it. The inorganic clash of antagonistic forces and contradictory emotional engagements was meant to entertain contemporary audiences, but the tragicomic mode also became a tool of investigating diversity of opinion, and as suggested by Lope de Vega in his poetics, it would force the audience to engage in critical reflection.

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Dixon, Victor. 1992. Lope de Vega and America: The New World and Arauco Tamed. Renaissance Studies 6 (3–4): 249–269. https://doi.org/10.1111/ j.1477-­4658.1992.tb00340.x. Evans, Geraint. 2012. The minotaur of the stage: Tragicomedy in Spain, 59–75. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell and Brewer Limited. Foster, Verna A. 2016. The name and nature of tragicomedy. Studies in European cultural transition. Vol. 18. London: Routledge. García Santo-Tomás, Enrique. 2012. Introducción a Lope de Vega, Arte Nuevo de hacer comedias. In Arte Nuevo de hacer comedias, 13–110. Madrid: Cátedra. Guarini, Giambattista. 1967. The compendium of tragicomic poetry (1599). In Literary criticism: Plato to Dryden, ed. Allan H.  Gilbert, 505–533. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Hernandez de Oviedo, G, Valdes, Gonzalo. 1535. Historia natural y general de las Indias Islas y tierra firme del mar Oceano, Parte 1–2, por el Capitan Gonzalo Hermandez de Oviedo y Valdes. Huerta Calvo, Javier. 1985. Teatro breve de los siglos XVI y XVII : entremeses, loas, bailes, jácaras y mojigangas. Temas de España. Vol. 148. Madrid: Taurus. Kirschner, Teresa J. 1998. Técnicas de representación en Lope de Vega. Colección Tamesis. Serie A – monografías. Vol. 171. Rochester, NY: Tamesis. Kluge, Sofie. 2018. "Dios Juzga de la Intención". Questioning Conquest in Lope de Vega's "El nuevo mundo descubierto por Cristóbal Colón". Nordic Journal of Renaissance Studies 13: 93–117. https://www.njrs.dk/13_2018/05_ kluge_vega.pdf. Lope de Vega, Félix. 1914. In The new art of writing plays, ed. Brander Matthews. Trans. William T.  Brewster. New  York: Dramatic Museum of Columbia University. ———. 2001. El nuevo mundo descubierto por Cristóbal Colón : una edición crítica y bilingüe : una comedia in tres actos por Lope de Vega = the new world discovered by Christopher Columbus: A critical and bilingual edition: A play in three acts by Lope de Vega / edited and translated by Robert M.  Shannon. Ibérica, 34, edited by Robert M. Shannon. New York: P. Lang. ———. 2003. Translations of the American plays of Lope de Vega: The discovery of the New World, the conquest of Araucania, Brazil restored. Translated by Kenneth A. Stackhouse. Hispanic literature ; 78. Lewiston, N.Y.: E. Mellen Press. ———. 2012. Arte nuevo de hacer comedias. edited by Enrique García Santo-­ Tomás. Madrid: Cátedra. Luis Hernán, Castañeda. 2010. "So color de religión": resolución dramática, disidencia ideológica y crisis de legitimación imperial en El nuevo mundo descubierto por Colón de Lope de Vega. Gestos (Irvine, Calif.) 25 (49): 35. Madera, Allan. 2016. Chapter 1. Shouting Distance: Local History and a Global Empire in Lope de Vega's Famosa comedia del nuevo mundo descubierto por

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Cristóbal Colón. In Imagining early modern histories, ed. Elizabeth Ketner and Allison Kavey, 13–26. Routledge. Maguire, Nancy Klein. 1987. Renaissance tragicomedy: Explorations in genre and politics. AMS studies in the renaissance. Vol. 20. New York: AMS. Maravall, Jose Antonio. 1986. Culture of the baroque: Analysis of a historical structure. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. McGrath, David. 2018. El horror y el humor en las comedias del nuevo mundo. In A Companion to Lope de Vega, ed. J.W. Thacker, A.W. Samson, A. Garcia Reidy, A. Rizavi, A. Mayo, B. Mujica, et al., 213–253. Boydell & Brewer, Limited. McKendrick, Melveena. 1992. Theatre in Spain, 1490–1700. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. ———. 2002. Playing the king: Lope de Vega and the limits of conformity. Reprint ed. Colección Támesis. Serie A, Monografías ; 182. London: Tamesis. Nelson, Bradley J. 2010. The persistence of presence: Emblem and ritual in Baroque Spain. University of Toronto Romance Series. Toronto, Ontario: University of Toronto Press. Ortiz Lottman, Maryrica. 2014. The New World in Lope de Vega's Columbus and St. Christopher: El nuevo mundo descubierto por Cristóbal Colón. In A companion to early modern Hispanic theater, ed. Hilaire Kallendorf. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill. Ostlund, DeLys. 1997. The re-creation of history in the Fernando and Isabel plays of Lope de Vega.Ibérica. Vol. 18. New York: P. Lang. Parker, Alexander Augustine. 1971. The approach to the Spanish drama of the golden age. London: The Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Councils. Perez, Laura Mier. 2018. El canon teatral profano en el primer tercio del siglo XVI: luces y sombras. Bulletin of Hispanic Studies (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press: 1996) 95 (8): 825–841. https://doi.org/10.3828/ bhs.2018.48. Pérez-Amador Adam, Alberto. 2011. De legitimatione imperii Indiae Occidentalis : la vindicación de la Empresa Americana en el discurso jurídico y teológico de las letras de los Siglos de Oro en España y los virreinatos americanos. Parecos y australes. Ensayos de Cultura de la Colonia. Vol. 5. Frankfurt am Main: Vervuert Verlagsgesellschaft. Rennert, Hugo Albert, and Américo Castro. 1919. Vida de Lope de Vega (1562–1635). Madrid. Samson, Alexander W., Jonathan W. Thacker, Alejandro Garcia Reidy, Ali Rizavi, Arantza Mayo, Barbara Mujica, David Johnston, David McGrath, Duncan Wheeler, and Edward H.  Friedman. 2018. A Companion to Lope de Vega. Monografías A Ser. Vol. 260. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, Limited. Shannon, Robert M. 1989. Visions of the New World in the drama of Lope de Vega. American university studies. Ser. 2, romance languages and literature. Vol. 67. New York: Lang.

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———. 2001. Introduction. In El nuevo mundo descubierto por Cristóbal Colón : una edición crítica y bilingüe : una comedia in tres actos por Lope de Vega = The new world discovered by Christopher Columbus: A critical and bilingual edition: A play in three acts by Lope de Vega, edited by Robert M. Shannon, 1–65. New York: Peter Lang. Shawcross, John T. 1987. Tragicomedy as genre, past and present. In Renaissance tragicomedy: Explorations in genre and politics, ed. Nancy Klein Maguire, 13–32. New York: AMS Press. Simerka, Barbara, Frederick A. de Armas, Norris J. Lacy, and Allan Stoekl. 2003. Discourses of empire: Counter-epic literature in early modern Spain. Penn State studies in romance literatures. University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press. Simonsen, Karen-Margrethe. 2016. Natural rights and power in the Spanish Comedia after the conquest. In The Routledge companion to literature and human rights, ed. Sophia A.  McClennen and Alexandra Schultheis Moore, 279–288. London and New York: Routledge. Simson, Ingrid. 2019. La función de la alegoría en las comedias de temática americana en el Siglo de Oro, 305–321. Frankfurt a. M., Madrid: Iberoamericana Vervuert. Thacker, Jonathan. 2007. A companion to golden age theatre. Woodbridge: Tamesis. ———. 2018. Lope, the comedian. In A Companion to Lope de Vega, edited by Alexander Samson and Jonathan Thacker, 159–170. Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer. Todorov, Tzvetan. 1992. The conquest of America: The question of the other. New York: HarperPerennial. Weiner, Jack. 1984. En busca de la justicia social : estudios sobre el teatro español del Siglo de Oro. Potomac, Md: Scripta Humanistica. Wise, Carl Austin. 2015. América desencuadernada en Lope de Vega: Texto y escritura en El nuevo mundo descubierto por Cristóbal Colón. Bulletin of Hispanic Studies (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press: 1996) 92 (2): 121. Zupančič, Alenka. 2008. The odd one in: On comedy. Short circuits. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

PART III

Tragic Modes of Theatricality and Human Rights in Nineteenth Century Cuba

CHAPTER 6

Melodramatic Theatricality: Tableaux of Natural Rights and Interracial Solidarity in Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda’s Sab

old idols will topple from their profaned altars, and the throne of justice will rise brilliantly over the ruins of old societies. (Gómez de Avellaneda 1993, 145) (“los viejos ídolos caerán de sus inmundos altares y el trono de la justicia se alzará brillante, sobre las ruinas de las viejas sociedades” (Gómez de Avellaneda 2001, 194).)

The novel Sab (1841) by the Cuban–Spanish writer Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda is one of the first antislavery novels in Spanish,1 the only one written by a woman and, according to some critics, one of the most radical. It is assumed to be radical because of its rights-based denunciation of 1  Catherine Davies relates that Avellaneda told her friend Nicomedes Pastor Díaz that “the novel was sketched before she left Cuba in 1836” (Davies 2013, 11). In her autobiography, Gómez de Avellaneda says that she started writing when she was in Burdeos, which was in 1836. According to José Servera Baño, she might have finished the novel in 1838 in Lisboa (Servera Baño 2014, 46). It was published 1841 in Madrid. Other works were even more delayed in print—for instance, Félix Tanco y Bosmoniel’s Petronia y Rosalía (written 1838, published 1925), Anselmo Suárez y Romero’s Francisco (written 1830s, published 1880), Cecilia Valdés (first volume written between 1838 and 1841, published 1882) (Kutzinski 1993, 19; William 2014, 1, 4). Juan Francisco Manzano’s Autobiography of a Slave, written in 1835, was published 1840 in England and in Spanish only a century later, in 1937.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 K.-M. Simonsen, Slavery and the Forensic Theatricality of Human Rights in the Spanish Empire, Palgrave Studies in Literature, Culture and Human Rights, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31531-2_6

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slavery (Luis 1998, 183–84; Romeo Fivel-Démoret 1989, 9), because of its destabilization of racialized social hierarchies (Sommer 1991, 131), and because it is the only novel from the nineteenth century in Spanish to depict an enslaved mulatto man’s love for a white woman (Davies 2013, 20; Marrero Henríquez 1990, 54). The novel was written in the middle of the 1830s and published in 1841 in Spain. It was censored in Cuba because, as the official statement said, it contained “subversive doctrines about the system of slavery in this island, doctrines that are contrary to good morals and customs” (“por contener […] doctrinas Subercivas [sic] del Sistema de esclavitud de esta Ysla, y contrarias á la moral y buenas costumbres”) (Kelly 1945, 306). Despite the censorship, which testifies to its perceived subversive character at the time, not all critics agree that the novel is subversive. Some critics claim that the novel is not an abolitionist text at all (Gomariz 2009, 97), that it only pays “lip-service to the anti-slavery cause” (Williams 2008, 160), that the issue of slavery “is secondary to that of women” or even a “mask for feminist protest” (Kirkpatrick 1989, 156–57), and that the aim of the novel is not to “present a denunciation of slavery, but to express [Avellaneda’s] feminist ideology” (Pastor 1997, 187). Due to the novel’s sentimentalist approach and its depiction of the enslaved protagonist’s voluntary subjugation to his masters, Jerome Branche has even suggested that the novel provides a benign image of slavery, “ennobling a particularly savage system of human exploitation” (Branche 1998, 17). Clearly, there is radical disagreement about the novel’s subversive or conservative character. Should the book be seen as an argument against slavery, or does it only sympathize emotionally with the enslaved while supporting and upholding the power structure of the colonial system? Much of the book’s reception has focused on the characters’ relation to slavery, especially the mulatto protagonist Sab’s (in)ability to protest against his own bonds and the white female protagonist Carlota’s (in)ability to sympathize with the plight of the enslaved. The best studies also relate the analysis of the plot and characters to a discussion of the genre. However, there is also disagreement about the genre. The novel has been called Romantic (Kirkpatrick 1989, 147–49; Méndez Rodenas 2017, 156), sentimental or sentimentalist (Branche 1998, 16), realist/costumbrista (Davies 2013, 14; Jiménez 2015, 57), a tragedy (Sommer 1991, 125), a melodrama (Read 2004, 69), a neo-pastoral (Ward 1999, 27), and a social romance (O’Brien 2013, ix). Often, when the book is called ‘sentimental’

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or ‘melodramatic,’ it is meant derogatorily to imply that the engagement with slavery is not serious or critical enough. However, I shall argue that the novel is a socially engaged melodramatic tragedy, structured around collisions of oppositional emotions and tableaux vivants of sentiment and reflection. Sab’s excessive emotionality and its Manichaean moral universe make it a melodrama; but, whereas most melodramas end happily, this one does not. All the good characters in the novel either die tragically or live unhappy lives. Though the novel is highly dramatic, as most melodramas are, it is through theatrical tableaux vivants that the novel disseminates its message of natural rights. The tableaux vivants create emotional and contemplative pauses in the drama. Their form unites life and death, absorption and reflection. The forensic dimension of the novel and its human rights claim are found in the protagonist Sab’s denunciation of slavery in a letter he writes just before he dies, one of the most dramatic moments of the novel. But they are also found in the tableaux and in the subtle and ever-present feeling of death that characterizes the atmosphere right from the beginning of the novel. Blood is constantly flowing in the novel, not only from the dying Sab’s mouth but also through the landscape, a sign of omnipresent death. The book’s ambiguity, which accounts for the divergence of readings, lies in the fact that it simultaneously describes the necessity for and the impossibility of rebellion. A melancholic moon is hanging over many of the most important scenes in the novel. However, as I shall argue, this melancholy is not a sign of resignation. On the contrary, the novel insists on a certain level of moral optimism and on creating moments of interracial and cross-gender solidarity that have the potential of transforming the social order through an inter-relational ethics. Far from seeing the novel as sentimentalist and hindering a serious engagement with the rights of the enslaved people or as a book that, in the words by Jerome Branche, “generates the illusion that violence is not violence” (Branche 1998, 17), I conceive the use of emotional drama and tableaux as a literary strategy to present the deeper, structural mechanisms of violence and a claim for justice. It is particularly interesting that in the novel black slavery is historically contextualized and compared to atrocities committed by the Spanish conquerors against the indigenous population in Cuba in previous centuries. At times, we almost hear echoes of Bartolomé de Las Casas’ denunciation of the conquerors’ crimes as they were phrased in the book Brevísima

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relación de la destruición de las Indias from 1542 to 1552 (see Chap. 3). By tying modern slavery to historical atrocities, the abuse of slavery is underlined, and an interracial solidarity between different oppressed peoples is created. Avellaneda’s novel also links the bondage of women in marriage in a patriarchal society and the enslavement of blacks and mulattos. Thus, the novel describes a social universe dominated by a multiplicity of human rights abuses and crimes. The potential radicalism of the novel lies not so much in its ability to depict ‘strong characters’ who succeed in protesting against slavery but in four strategies that are not related to any one character: First, the novel invokes natural rights through a number of dialogues and tableaux. Second, through this strategy, an inter-relational ethics is created. Third, very often, it allows contrary emotions to clash in a way that raises doubts about the interpretation of the novel. Since it is a melodrama, it creates a tension between the surface value of the events and the spiritual depth. Finally, since the voice of the oppressed has limited public exposure, it invests the landscape with a denunciative ‘voice.’ All these strategies force the reader to reflect critically on morality. I am interested in shifting the focus from an analysis of the protagonist(s) seen in isolation to a discussion of the relationships between different characters and the ethical consequences of the aesthetic structure of the novel. The forensic ‘content’ cannot be understood without an analysis of the way it is embedded in an aesthetic form. After a brief summary of the novel and a discussion of its genre as melodramatic tragedy, I shall analyze a number of highly theatrical tableaux, first a tableau that establishes a relation between love and natural rights, then a number of tableaux of death, closely related to the explicit denunciation of slavery. I shall argue that despite the melancholic tone in the novel and the constant clashes of oppositional emotions, there is a certain optimism about the potentiality of a cross-gendered and cross-racial solidarity. I shall demonstrate how the crimes against indigenous and black people continue to pollute the landscape of Cuba, amounting to a silent denunciation of violence.

A Tragic Love Story: Its Content and Context Sab takes place around 1818  in the ‘interior’ region of Cuba, in Santa María de Puerto Príncipe (now Camagüey) at the Bellavista sugar plantation and its nearby surroundings. The location is important for three

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reasons: It dissociates the sugar plantation in the novel from the sugar industry in the northwest of the island; it creates a link to a local history of syncretism and racial equality between blacks, whites, and Native Americans; and it creates a link to a political history of resistance. In contrast with the expansive growth of a modern sugar industry in the northwest of Cuba, the sugar plantation in the novel is described as being in decline because its owner, Don Carlos B., is inefficient and uninterested in adjusting to modern production methods. He runs his sugar plantation as a patriarchal family business that supposedly maintains good personal relations with its enslaved people rather than as a modern, rationalized industry.2 Bellavista is located near Cubitas, where Martina, a minor character, lives. She presents herself as a direct descendant of the Taino cacique Camagüey, and the town of Puerto Príncipe (Camagüey) is built on top of an old Taino village. According to Antonio Benitez-Rojo, this region has a special tradition of racial equality, reflected in its music, dance, and cuisine. There is also a syncretistic cult of Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre, which mixes white, Native American, and African religions. In the fight against the French, there was a tradition for “multicolored” troops of “Indians, whites, and Negroes” (Benítez-Rojo 1996, 51). It was also here that Silvestre de Balboa wrote Cuba’s first literary text, the epic poem Espejo de paciencia (1606), which used for the first time the word “creole” and celebrated the honorable and valiant ‘creole negro’ Salvador (“Salvador criollo, negro honrado”) (Balboa y Troya de Quesada 1608; Benítez-Rojo 1996, 52). In addition, Puerto Príncipe has a proud history of resistance, so well-­ known that a nineteenth-century British travelogue by Samuel Hazard describes it as a town that had “always been looked upon with suspicion by the authorities on account of the strong proclivities its people had for insurrection” (Hazard 1871, 516). According to Matt D.  Childs, “Rebellions and alleged conspiracies in the region […] broke out in 1795, 1796, 1797, 1798, 1805 and 1809”; and, during the Aponte rebellion of 1812, there were violent insurrections at five plantations (Childs 2006, 122–23). There were also uprisings in 1822 and 1826 (Luis 1998, 2  Antonio Benítez-Rojo writes that Havana was the only legal port that was connected with the international trading and fleet system. The natives of the eastern regions of Cuba were isolated and branded by colonial bureaucracy as “heretical, excitable, vague, lazy, smugglers, etc.” (Benítez-Rojo 1996, 51)

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182–83). The town was the residence of some of the most important antislavery advocates such as the liberal Gaspar Alonso Betancourt y Cisneros (Sánchez 1998, 618). Catherine Davies even suggests that the “B” in the name of Don Carlos B. alludes to the figure of Betancourt (Davies 2013, 25). The town is the birthplace of Gómez de Avellaneda herself.3 The plot of the novel takes place in June 1818—that is, six years after the Aponte rebellion and fourteen years after the proclamation of the new nation of Haiti, very close to Cuba. In the novel, it is explicitly mentioned that the violent events “at a nearby island” are ever present in the minds of the Cubans; and, according to Colleen O’Brien, there are clear echoes of the Aponte rebellion in the novel (O’Brien 2013, 69). The history of resistance and the link to the syncretistic culture in the area play an important role, as we shall see. In the novel, we follow the mulatto Sab, who has been raised in the house of Don Carlos B. and has fallen in love with Don Carlos’ daughter, Carlota. Unaware of this love, Carlota sees Sab as a kind of brother. She is engaged to be married to Enrique Otway, an English merchant who has risen quickly in the social hierarchy thanks to his talent for business. However, Enrique’s father has had some unfortunate business transactions, and the English family has lost much of its wealth. Enrique, who mistakenly thinks that the family of Don Carlos is incredibly rich, is out to marry Carlota for her money though he does not love her. As the reader knows and Enrique discovers, Don Carlos, just like Enrique’s own father, has lost much of his wealth. The plot takes its point of departure in a moment of crisis for the two white families. This is where the mulatto Sab comes to play a decisive role. By pure accident, he possesses a lottery ticket of enormous value, enough to restore the families to their former wealth. He considers giving the ticket to Teresa, Carlota’s cousin, who due to some misfortunes lives in the house of Don Carlos and is like a sister to Carlota. She is described as rather ‘unattractive’ and emotionally rigid, but it turns out that she loves Enrique Otway passionately. Sab discovers this and hopes that Otway will marry Teresa if he knows that she has money. This solution would prevent 3  Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda’s own father was not a liberal like Betancourt. He was a Spanish naval officer who helped suppress the Aponte insurrection (Davies 2013, 3). Gómez de Avellaneda writes in one of her letters that her father foresaw that Cuba would meet a destiny like that of a nearby island that was kept prisoner by the blacks (“igual a la de otra Isla vecina, presa de los negros”) (Gomariz 2009, 104).

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the marriage between Enrique and Carlota. Teresa, however, proves herself to be a stoic heroine, loyal to the family that took her in, and a sisterly and dear friend to Carlota. She refuses to accept the offer of the winning ticket, which might have secured her marriage to the man she loves. When she refuses the offer, Sab changes his mind and decides secretly to swap Carlota’s lottery ticket with the winning one. Sab, thus, becomes a true hero, sacrificing not only his own happiness but also his hope of revenge by securing the marriage of his enemy to the love of his life. When Otway learns that Carlota has won a prize of 40,000 pesos, he immediately decides to marry her—an apparently ‘happy’ ending. However, the marriage between Carlota and Otway turns out to be very unhappy, Teresa retreats to a nunnery, and Sab dies from a curious disease that causes him to vomit blood. Before he dies, he writes a letter to Teresa, which furnishes the novel’s concluding remarks. In the letter, he again declares his passionate love for Carlota. He provides a fierce and bitter critique of slavery and the unequal structure of society. He also expresses his doubt about God’s purpose in allowing such a society to exist. Some years later, after Sab has been dead for a long time and Teresa is on her deathbed, the letter is given to Carlota, who keeps it as her only consolation in her loveless life with Otway.

Melodrama and Morality Traditional melodrama is built on an ‘excess’ of emotions and a Manichaean moral universe. Spectators and readers watch a drama unfold of the conflict between good and evil. The evil forces will necessarily be strong; but, in the end, the good ones prevail in the battle. As Peter Brooks has observed, melodrama “shares many characteristics with the Gothic novel but it diverges from the Gothic novel because it is more optimistic. It wants to prove that there is a moral universe that can be made to assert its presence” (Brooks 1976, 20). Despite its Romantic mode, which stresses the strong passions of the heroes and heroines, it does not have a genuinely Romantic interest in subjectivity, attending rather to the moral grounds of individual behavior than individuality itself. This explains why the characters are never given a complex personality even though ‘psychological’ moods and sentiments dominate the genre. In the novel, the Englishmen of the story, Enrique and his father Jorge Otway are the villains, obsessed as they are with commerce and greed. The local Cubans, who live in the interior of Cuba in Puerto Príncipe

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(Camagüey) and Cubitas, are good. The importance of the novel for the construction of Cuban national identity has often been noted, and it is no coincidence that it is the Englishmen who are the villains. They come to the country as commercial and cultural intruders. However, here, the similarities with traditional melodrama stop. In classical melodrama, the ‘villain’ is a necessity to move the drama along. According to Peter Brooks, we typically start out with an idyll, an enclosed garden inhabited by virtuous women, when an intruder suddenly appears who disturbs the established order. As spectators, we suffer empathetically with the victims who are terribly frightened by the disturbance of order. But, in a typical melodrama, order is restored in the end—often, through a trick or a sudden discovery or the unmasking of the villainous plot (Brooks 1976, 28–35). In classical melodrama, the villain (the male plot-­ driver) is the most fascinating character, whereas the victims (often female), who are subjected to horror, mainly impress by their tears (Brooks 1976, 32, 34). This plot structure is completely different in Sab. Even though its moral universe is clearly Manichaean, the villains (the English merchants) are strangely uninteresting and, to a certain extent, not really evil. They are only representatives of a structural evil—for example, market forces (Kirkpatrick 1989, 148). Enrique Otway is described as a morally weak but moderately sympathetic man. In the very first scene, he engages in dialogue with Sab and criticizes the institution of slavery. If there is a true villain, it is his father Jorge Otway, who forces his son to prioritize money over love, but Jorge plays a very insignificant role. He only appears in very brief moments of the story and does not attract a lot of interest. The good characters, especially Sab, are the engine of the plot. Also, as hinted above, this novel does not begin with an idyllic, peaceful garden though it may appear to. The natural environment of Cuba is often described as an Edenic landscape (Méndez Rodenas 2017, 156); but, in reality, the moral universe of the novel is perverted from the very beginning, and slavery is the cause. Quoting Sab, the colonial system has committed a “moral murder,” that is, a murder of morality (“han inventado asesinatos morales” (Gómez de Avellaneda 2001, 193). The plot is not set in an orderly universe that is corrupted by an evil intruder; the setting is already a morally corrupted universe in which the villains seem almost innocent since they are only representatives of a structural evil. The good characters strive to find an alternative, utopian social order to disrupt this structural evil. The moral drama of the book is about

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this struggle—a struggle that will necessarily fail. Social order is certainly restored, but the reader is left in no doubt that this is a restoration of the original ‘evil’ order. Enrique Otway becomes the exceedingly rich merchant that he desired to be. The bad persons survive and thrive; the good persons either die or suffer. It is appropriate, therefore, to see Sab as a tragic melodrama. It may be optimistic in its belief in a good moral universe, the existence of which it tries to establish throughout the novel, but it is deeply pessimistic when it comes to the realization of that goodness in the concrete reality of nineteenth-century Cuban society. Rather than providing the story with a happy ending, it closes with a painful gap between moral idealism and crude realism. Much of the fascination in the story resides in its constant exposition of simultaneous but opposite emotions. The characters are often both extremely happy and extremely sorrowful. The novel is hopeful and pessimistic, passionate and reflective, etc.—at the same time. The ambiguities are not located in the emotions in themselves. All the emotions in the novel are pure and strong: true love, immense sorrow, and so on. The ambiguity is the result of the coexistence of contradictory emotions. In order to understand the function of this ambiguity, we have to revisit the question of genre and analyze the tableaux of love and of death.

Romantic Love and the Spiritual Vision of Natural Rights The mulatto Sab is in love with Carlota. This love cuts across race and social class. It is not permissible, and it is not reciprocal. Yet, despite its failure, it is clear from the novel’s depiction of this love between a mulatto man and a white woman that it has the potential to undermine the social structure. As Elena Grau-Lleveria has argued, Sab is a social romance in the sense that the romance of the novel is related to the structure of society and the possibility of rebellion against it: El romanticismo social, como el romanticismo general, exalta la passion, esa ‘fuerza divina […] ante la cual todo debe ceder’ ya que la pasión se convierte en la razón de la rebeldía social (Grau-Lleveria 2010, 34). Social Romanticism, like Romanticism in general, exalts passion, this ‘divine force […] that must conquer everything,’ since passion transforms itself into the reason for social rebellion (Grau-Lleveria 2010, 34) (my translation).

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Love in itself, or its divine force, becomes the raison d’être of social rebellion. The divinity of love is not only a metaphor. Often, in the novel, the love of God seems to mix with earthly love to correct the immoral social order. Love and religion come together in transgressive moments such as the following in which Sab, who is the speaker in the passage, gets as close as he can to a moment of fulfilled love. In a melancholic moment in the night, he happens to witness Carlota leave the house and send her prayers up to God. This tableau, I would argue, is close to Social Romanticism: Su traje era una bata blanquísima, y la palidez de su rostro y el brillo de sus ojos humedecidos, daban a toda su figura algo de aéreo y sobrenatural. La luna en su plenitud colgaba del azul mate del firmamento, como una lámpara circular, y rielaban sus rayos entonces sobre la frente virginal de aquella melancólica hermasura. Yo me arrastré por tierra hasta colocarme otra vez junto a la ventana, y de pecho contra el suelo mis ojos y mi corazón se fijaron en Carlota. También ella parecía agitada, y un minuto después la vi caer de rodillas junto a la reja: entonces estábamos tan cerca que pude besar un canto de la cinta que ceñía la bata a su cintura, y que colgaba fuera de la reja, mientras apoyaba en ella sus dos hermosos brazos y su cabeza de ángel. Permaneció un momento en esta postura, durante el cual yo sentía mi corazón que me ahogaba y abría mis secos labios para recoger ávidamente el aire que ella respiraba. Luego levantó lentamente la cabeza y sus ojos, llenos de lágrimas, tomaron naturalmente la dirección del cielo. ¡Paréceme verla aún! Sus manos desprendiéndose de la reja se elevaron también y la luz de la luna, que bañaba su frente, parecía formar en torno suyo una aureola celestial. ¡Jamás se ha ofrecido a las miradas de los hombres tan divina hermosura! Nada había de terrestre y mortal en aquella figura: era un ángel que iba a volar al cielo abierto ya para recibirle […] (Gómez de Avellaneda 2001, 138–139). (She was wearing a dress of purest white; the paleness of her face and the shine of her moist eyes gave her figure an ethereal and supernatural quality. The full moon was suspended like a circular lamp from the somber blue of the firmament, and its rays glimmered on the virginal brow of that melancholy beauty. I dragged myself along the ground until I was once again next to the window and, lying flat on the earth, fixed my eyes and my heart on Carlota. She, too, seemed agitated, and a minute later I watched her fall to her knees by

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the grille. At that point we were so close that I could kiss the border of the sash which tied her dress at the waist; this ribbon hung outside the grille on which she rested her two lovely arms and her angelic head. She remained in this position for a moment, during which time I felt my heart about to burst and opened my dry lips eagerly to drink in the air which she breathed. Then she slowly raised her head and lifted her tear-filled eyes heavenward. I can still see her! Releasing the grille, she lifted up her hands as well, and the moonlight which bathed her brow appeared to form a divine halo. Never have the eyes of man been offered such divine beauty! There was nothing earthly or mortal in that figure: it was an angel about to fly to Heaven, its portals already wide to receive her […] (Gómez de Avellaneda 1993, 101–102)).

A little later, he sums up his experience in this way: Yo creía sin duda que ambos íbamos a morir en aquel momento y a presentarnos juntos ante el Dios de amor y de misericordia. Un sentimiento confuso de felicidad vaga, indefinible, celestial, llenó mi alma, elevándola a un éxtasis sublime de amor divino y de amor humano; a un éxtasis inexplicable en el que Dios y Carlota se confundían en mi alma (Gómez de Avellaneda 2001, 139). (I believed absolutely that at that very moment both of us were going to die and appear together before the God of love and mercy. A confused feeling of vague, indefinite, celestial happiness filled my soul, lifting it to a sublime ecstasy of divine and human love, to an indescribable ecstasy in which God and Carlota fused in my soul. (Gómez de Avellaneda 1993, 102))

I have quoted this passage at length to show the intense melodramatic and Romantic character of the moment and to stress the time Avellaneda allows for Sab to paint this image. The tableau engenders a double fascination, described by Brooks as typical of the melodrama: fascination with the visuality of the surface and a sense of the spiritual reality underneath, which is the true scene of the drama (Brooks 1976, 2). Because of its beauty, its emotional impact, and its promise of a deeper meaning, the tableau draws the reader into its magic circle. There is a tension between the stillness, the introverted and even contemplative character of the scene, and the drama that apparently lies beneath the surface. This tension is the hallmark of tableaux vivants. The figures are arrested in their movement; yet, movement is inherent to their confined corporeal positions. In

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his historical study of the painterly tableaux, Michael Fried argued that self-absorption became an important topic for French painters during the eighteenth century (Fried 1988, 13ff). Paintings of the period are full of figures that are looking down, reading, dreaming, half-asleep, caught in an extreme emotional state or in the middle of a thought, figures who are on the verge of unconsciousness and, therefore, assume a natural, unstudied pose (Fried 1988, 13). Yet, the paintings in themselves are deeply theatrical and artificial. According to Fried, self-absorption is an “artistic effect” in some of them (Fried 1988, 61). One important example may be found in the paintings by Jean-Baptiste Greuze, for instance in Young Girl Mourning the Loss of Her Bird, which is famously analyzed as a dramatic tableau by Denis Diderot in his Salon 1765 (Fig. 6.1) (Diderot et al. 1984). In his description of this image, Diderot lets himself be poetically and narratively absorbed into the enigma of the image. He notes the “enchanting” figure of the girl, the “naturalness” and “vivacity” of the picture and its careful and fine painterly techniques. He exclaims: “How natural her pose! How beautiful her head! How elegantly her hair is arranged! How expressive her face! Her pain is profound! […]” (Diderot 1995, 97). Enticed by the enigma of the picture, and its duality of naturalness and artificiality, Diderot makes up a whole story about the reason for the girl’s sorrow. He asks himself: “Why this dreamy, melancholy air?” (98) and he answers: She is not just crying over the loss of a bird; her lover has just left her, the bird was a gift from him, her mother does not understand, etc. Introverted contemplation and psychological drama come together. The depiction of self-absorption gives the spectator the sense of being invited Fig. 6.1  Jean-Baptiste Greuze: A Girl with a Dead Canary, 1765. Scottish National Gallery. Public Domain. Wikimedia Commons

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into the intimate room of the figure in the painting especially because that figure seems unaware of our gaze. Likewise, in Avellaneda’s tableau: Carlota is at its center, and there is a clash between the natural pose and its extremely artificial theatricality. Carlota is naturally caught up in her intense feeling of sorrow. She is self-­ absorbed, and her gesture toward heaven seems an almost unconscious corporeal reaction to her feelings. At the same time, there is an explicit staging of the scene with a full moon hanging above it like a circular lamp (!), lighting the picturesque melancholic moment. Carlota falls naturally to the ground, weighed down by emotion, but her posture and gestures seem to be directed toward an invisible audience. Like Diderot, we are invited to guess the cause of her sorrow. Is she not happy in her marriage with Enrique? There is an excess of emotionality that threatens to destroy its painterly quality or its contemplative character. As Carlota raises her eyes and hands in a prayer to God, Sab is on the verge of shouting to her to let her know that he is there, which would have spoiled the atmosphere and ruined the image. He contains himself and watches as Carlota’s earthly gesture of prayer elevates her and seems to carry her directly to heaven. Sab sees her as an angel. It is the scene of a Platonic ‘intercourse’ in which Sab gets to breathe the same air as Carlota and can dream of a union before God, but it also has a more general moral value. Carlota becomes the mediator between Sab and God: she leads him, metaphorically speaking, to the justice of God. It is a metaphor, but it is also real, emotionally speaking. In fact, in Sab’s mind, Carlota becomes the incarnation of a transcendental morality as she is fused with God. The whole idea of the tableau is to make spiritual truth literal. In her prayer to God, Carlota quotes the passage from the Bible in which Jesus allegedly says: “Come to me all you who are weary and are [sic] carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest.” In the novel, “God” is the name of ultimate peace, but he is also the Supreme Being who has installed the harmony of nature on earth, a natural order of harmony that men of earth ought to follow. As Sab says, nature does not treat people of different races differently; the sun shines on black men as well as on white men (Gómez de Avellaneda 1993, 97). The problem is, of course, that men do not heed the natural order of equality. Though some critics have claimed that the tableau can only be understood in a metaphorical sense since the love between Sab and Carlota is not consummated, I would claim that at a moral level its value has been

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realized. The love that Sab feels for Carlota may not be realistic, but it is certainly real. Sab’s sense of justice is fed simultaneously by love, religion, and a deep sense of harmonious nature. He has not reached the idea of equality among men by studying political philosophy or literature. On the contrary, most of the books that he knows confirm the inequality of races, one rare exception being Othello by Shakespeare. In the absence of an enlightened literature about justice or any abolitionist literature, transgressive love, fed by religious feeling, serves as a medium for revolutionary sentiment. Even though Sab does not engage in revolution himself and even reassures Teresa that the white people in Cuba do not have to fear such a revolution (Gómez de Avellaneda 1993, 97; 2001, 133), the book clearly shows that the unequal social structure based on racism is ‘against nature.’ Some critics have argued that Sab is unable to engage in a social rebellion because he is enslaved by his love for Carlota. The most convincing argument is made by Jerome Branche, who after a short analysis of the same passage in the book that I have quoted above concludes: Carlota’s sublimated union with the protagonist would seem to be an instance of the female version of White sexual hegemony in New World slave culture. … Disregarding declarations of his freedom by his owners, [Sab] swears to remain Carlota’s slave forever. In voluntarily giving up the lottery that he wins in order to secure her a dowry, while he himself dies a virgin, he confirms the lack of free will that defines the model slave. His self-­abnegation also confirms the slaveholder’s dream of absolute power (Branche 1998, 17).

For Branche, the sublime scene of union between Sab and Carlota is only another subjugation of the slave. However, against this reading, one could argue that, in the scene, Carlota is totally unaware of the presence of the slave, let alone his love for her. She cannot be said to be using her hegemonic power to make Sab love her in any direct way. She does, of course, represent the oppressive colonial system and the slaveholder, but the reader knows that she genuinely wishes to set Sab free. Moreover, one could argue, by questioning the love of Sab, Branche himself undermines the position of the slave. Sexual gratification does not seem to be the most pressing issue for Sab. He is more concerned with the force of love. In the passage, the narrator is Sab himself; and, for him, the imagined spiritual union with Carlota leads directly to the realization of equality before God. Admittedly, it would have been better if Sab could have understood and

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felt equality in another way than through love for his white mistress, but as the book demonstrates, this is difficult within the slave society. Many other paths to an understanding of equality have been blocked for him, including the reading of abolitionist literature. The love scene is a rare moment that establishes not only the idea but an actual experience of equality. Finally, Branche’s reading ignores Gómez de Avellaneda’s intention with the scene and the effect of the tableau on the reader. Though one can speculate that the story about the slave’s love for his mistress is related to some kind of suppressed, sublimated desire for power in the writer herself, it is more important for the intense tableau to make the reader understand that his love is real and that Sab would have been the right and natural husband of Carlota. The tableau serves as an egalitarian argument. Within the Romantic framework of the novel, Sab’s emotional and moral superiority to Enrique Otway is demonstrated. Only unjust social hierarchies allow Enrique to marry Carlota while Sab cannot. This moral message of the novel is captured most vividly in the tableau.

Speaking from the Grave: Sab’s Letter and the Tableaux of Death In one of the final scenes in the novel, Sab hastens on horseback to a coastal town to deliver an urgent letter from Don Carlos to Enrique. In the letter, Don Carlos tells Enrique the devastating news that Carlota’s younger brother is dying and needs his father by his side. Therefore, Don Carlos wishes to advance in time the planned wedding between Enrique and Carlota. He asks Enrique to come to the farm immediately to marry Carlota. For Enrique this letter comes at an inconvenient moment. He has finally realized that Don Carlos is not very rich and he has just decided not to marry Carlota; however, the letter does not only contain information about the imminent death of Carlota’s brother, it also communicates that Carlota has won 40,000 pesos. Sab watches closely while Enrique reads the letter and he sees how Enrique changes his mind about the marriage while reading about Carlota’s newly obtained riches. This letter seals Sab’s fate. He feels death approaching. He watches the ocean, which seems to offer him a vast and deep grave; and, like a figure of Jesus, he looks to the sky as if to say: “I accepted the cup which You ordered me to drain […]” (Gómez de Avellaneda 1993, 118)) (“Yo acepté

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el cáliz que me has mandado apurar” (Gómez de Avellaneda 2001, 160)). After this Christian apotheosis, he falls to the ground beside his horse, which has already died from exhaustion. He “lets his head drop on his horse’s body, spattering it with a rush of blood that burst from his mouth” (Gómez de Avellaneda 1993, 119). The scene is described as “a strange spectacle” (“extraño espectáculo de un hombre y un caballo” (Gómez de Avellaneda 2001, 161)), and Sab rises from this as a “pale and bloody ghost” (Gómez de Avellaneda 1993, 119) (“un espectro pálido y cubierto de sangre” (Gómez de Avellaneda 2001, 161)). It is as if he is already dead and has been turned into a ghost. After this, he borrows a horse and rushes off to die at the home of Martina, the indigenous woman who has adopted him, only to discover that she is already in mourning for her son Luis, who is dying of a fever that very night. The scene of his death is presented as a “dramatic picture” (“cuadro dramático”) and “a terrible spectacle” (“un espectáculo terrible”) (Gómez de Avellaneda 2001, 168).4 Sab sends Martina to bed and promises to look after Luis. While suffering violent attacks of fever, he manages to write his last letter. He then collapses on Luis’ bed, vomiting blood upon the bed and the poor dead boy. The scene is highly dramatic yet stylized in an almost painterly tableau. It is underlined again and again that it is a spectacular picture. As mentioned previously, there is an inherent tension between movement and stillness in a tableau. This tension is heightened in the ekphrastic tableaux of death that unite the vision of desperate activity and need to communicate with ultimate stillness and silence. Sab makes his final and most explicit statement about slavery in a scene of death, spattered with blood. But, in that moment, he is overpowered by other forces that help him speak. He becomes like Jesus, and his spilled blood becomes a message about his suffering as an oppressed being. The blood testifies to his “moral assassination” committed by the colonial system of slavery. In his final letter, addressed to Teresa, he denounces slavery as a crime, perpetrated by man against the natural order of the world. The letter appears almost at the end of the novel and is only revealed and read after his death. Thus, the letter speaks ‘literally’ from the grave. In the letter, emotionality merges with an appeal to natural rights. Sab proclaims his great love for Carlota and protests vehemently against the rigid, racialized hierarchy in Cuba that does not let him confess his love and propose to 4  The English translation by Nina Scott has “dramatic scene” and “terrible sight.” I have translated more literally to underline the theatricality of the scene.

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her. It is a personal tragedy, but in the letter Sab also speaks on behalf of his ‘race.’ In a passage that bears a resemblance to Shylock’s famous ‘rights talk’ in The Merchant of Venice, Sab denounces slavery as an unnatural and inhuman institution. In Shakespeare’s drama, deeply wounded by the injustice of the Christians, Shylock, the Jewish merchant, exclaims: “I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; … if you prick us, do we not bleed?” (Act II, Scene I). Sab’s speech goes like this: ¿El gran jefe de esta gran familia humana, habrá establecido diferentes leyes para los que nacen con la tez negra y la tez blanca? ¿No tienen todos las mismas necesidades, las mismas pasiones, los mismos defectos? ¿Por qué pues tendrán los unos el derecho de esclavizar y los otros la obligación de obedecer? (Gómez de Avellaneda 2001, 188). (Has the supreme head of this great human family perhaps established different laws for those who are born with white skin and those with black? Don’t all have the same needs, the same passions, the same flaws? Why, then, do some have the right to enslave and others the duty to obey? (Gómez de Avellaneda 1993, 140))

Through an emotional appeal, a common bond of humanity is made between Jews and Christians (in Shakespeare) and between blacks and whites (in Sab). Common humanity is the foundation of equality of rights. Seen in relation to basic natural rights, social inequality is exposed as a false and evil order. Sab’s letter is an explicit claim for justice in the name of natural rights. As Sab says, God would never sanction the unfair laws (“inicuos códigos”) on which men build their right to buy and sell human beings.5 It is difficult not to see this as a crystal-clear protest against the institution of slavery. In spite of the reassurances, given in other scenes, that Sab will not start a revolt, the vehemence of sentiment that underscores the 5  “¿Dios podrá sancionar los códigos inicuos en los que el hombre funda sus derechos para comprar y vender al hombre, y sus intérpretes en la tierra dirán al esclavo; − tu deber es sufrir: la virtud del esclavo es olvidarse de que es hombre, renegar de los beneficios que Dios le dispensó, abdicar la dignidad con que le ha revestido, y besar la mano que le imprime el sello de la infamia? No, los hombres mienten: la virtud no existe en ellos” (Gómez de Avellaneda 2001, 188–189).

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antislavery message in the letter suggests that in other circumstances, he might have done just that. In a conversation with Teresa earlier in the novel, he confessed that he has often thought of taking up arms against the oppressors, “to fling the terrifying cry of freedom and vengeance into their midst, to bathe in the blood of the whites, to trample their bodies and their laws under my feet” (Gómez de Avellaneda 1993, 99).6 Allowing such clear and violent antislavery rhetoric to be voiced by a mulatto who is an unquestionable virtuous and well-spoken man and the story’s hero was highly scandalous in contemporary Cuban slave society. It is clearly one of the reasons the book was censored and did not appear in Cuba until 1914 (Kelly 1945, 315). Yet Sab is not a rebel who takes up arms. He is a tragic hero who suffers and bleeds to death. He ‘only’ argues his case and the case of all enslaved people in writing. But his letter that is written in the moment of dying, and while surrounded by death, forms a strong antislavery message. In the letter, Sab lets “the blood speak,” demonstrating the crime through his wounds. The claim for justice is spattered on the paper just like the blood from Sab’s mouth is spattered on the world. As we saw in the drama by Michael de Carvajal, it is precisely at the moment of death or in scenes in which the protagonists are confronted with death that the claim for justice is expounded in the clearest manner (see Chap. 4). However, in contrast with Carvajal, death is not an allegorical figure but an extreme sensory experience. The image of a heroic mulatto slave with the capacity of true love, who sacrifices himself and claims justice in vain at the very moment of his death, is a devastating image of suffering. It is a dramatization and an echo of that desperate “cry in the desert” (Montesinos) or that cri de la nature that has been voiced through the centuries against the horrible institution of slavery. How can this image fail to impress the reader? And how come that the novel, despite the strong antislavery message in Sab’s letter, is not always read as an antislavery novel? For Jerome Branche the problem is Sab’s “aloneness” (Branche 1998, 18). The letter is a symptom of his privileged social position that is unlike the terrible position of the field slaves. Sab cannot be the voice of the enslaved people, since he has been whitened too 6  “He pensado también en armar contra nuestros opresores, los brazos encadenados de sus víctimas; arrojar en medio de ellos el terrible grito de libertad y venganza; bañarme en sangre de blancos; hollar con mis pies sus cadáveres y sus leyes y perecer yo mismo entre sus ruinas […]” (Gómez de Avellaneda 2001, 136).

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much. Also his antislavery letter only reaches the ears of the white people long after he is dead, and does not seem to affect the system of slavery, nor even the social norms of white people. Sab seems alienated both from his ‘peers’ and from his white oppressors and his letter is voiced as if coming from inside a black box. It also appears almost as an appendix to the book. However, as I shall argue in the following section, the emotional structure of the novel establishes the link between the white peoples’ plantation life and the mulatto’s suffering that the narration seems to deny.

The Strange Simultaneity of Happiness and Death Like all melodramas, Sab is full of extreme feelings. However, as mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, emotions frequently clash, which makes the reader reflect on the function of the emotions in relation to the morality of the story. In order to understand how that works, let us look at a couple of scenes. In one of the opening scenes of Sab, we meet Carlota in a strangely sad moment of her life. She is young and beautiful and about to be married to the love of her life. Yet, she is melancholic because, in this moment of radical change, she cannot help thinking about her mother, who has been dead for four years. Nostalgia for the past mixes with longing and fear for the future. She is accompanied by Teresa, her close friend. The reader will soon learn that Teresa, who is less attractive than Carlota, is secretly in love with Enrique. We feel Teresa’s pain when she notices Carlota’s tears in a moment of happiness. She cannot help exclaiming: “Beautiful, rich, cherished… you should not be the one to weep” (Gómez de Avellaneda 1993, 34) (“Hermosa, rica, querida, no eres tú la que debes llorar” (Gómez de Avellaneda 2001, 49)). Carlota agrees but cannot help herself. She is melancholic. We learn that this melancholy is not an isolated event and not only related to the mourning of a dead mother. It dominates Carlota’s whole being. The tableau-like scene of sorrow in which Carlota cries melodramatically in a picturesque position with her arms resting on the windowsill is illuminated by the moon—as are many scenes in the novel. Only at very brief moments in the story does melancholy leave Carlota. The feeling is not only a natural sorrow related to the loss of her mother; it is part and parcel of her as a person or, to be more precise, a symptom of the moral dilemmas of her life. Carlota’s tears in this early scene are a premonition of the moral tragedy of her marriage with the English merchant.

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Yet, the events described in this scene seem to deny this moral truth. Immediately after the scene of sorrow described above, Enrique arrives on horseback; and, as they hear the sound of the horse hoofs in the yard, Carlota suddenly exclaims: “You are right when you say that I am very fortunate!” (Gómez de Avellaneda 1993, 37). (“Tienes razón […] ¡Soy muy dichosa” (Gómez de Avellaneda 2001, 53)). After that, Teresa repeats her words as if to ensure that the reader has no doubt: “Yes, you are very fortunate” (ibid.), but the repetition is the opposite of confirmation. It opens a gap between appearance and being. There is an irreconcilable clash between the surface happiness and the sorrow underneath. Later in the novel, we see several situations exhibiting the simultaneity of sorrow and joy as well as death and happiness. When Sab witnesses the death of Martina’s son Luis, he thinks the following: Pensó que iba a morir también, y que en aquel mismo instante que él sufría una dolorosa agonía, Enrique y Carlota pronunciaban sus juramentos de amor (Gómez de Avellaneda 2001, 169). (He realized that he was going to die, too, and that, at the same instant that he was suffering an agonizing end, Enrique and Carlota would exchange their vows of love (Gómez de Avellaneda 1993, 125)) (my emphasis).

After his death, the narrator confirms: “Sab died at six in the morning, at the same hour that Enrique and Carlota were receiving the nuptial blessing” (Gómez de Avellaneda 1993, 126).7 The reader might think that the death of Sab, happening far away from the plantation, does not affect the happiness of Carlota and Enrique. But, as an overseer rushes in to bring them the news of his death, Carlota clearly feels that death is threatening her happiness: “I see death rising up and threatening all my loved ones” (Gómez de Avellaneda 1993, 129) (“veo la muerte levantarse amenezando todas las cabezas queridas” (Gómez de Avellaneda 2001, 174)). Carlota fights to separate the sorrow from the happiness. However, the narrator does not let the reader separate the two emotions. The wedding scene follows immediately after Sab’s death scene. Thus, his death is on our mind as we read Carlota’s exclamation: 7  “Sab expiró a las seis de la mañana: en esa misma hora Enrique y Carlota recibían la bendición nupcial” (Gómez de Avellaneda 2001, 170).

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¡Oh, Enrique! […] ¡ya lo ves!, todo se reúne para afligirme, para hacer triste y sombrío este día de nuestra unión: ¡este día que tan dichoso debía ser! (Gómez de Avellaneda 2001, 177) (Oh, Enrique, there you are, everything conspires to trouble me, to make this day of our union sad and dismal: this day, which should be such a happy one! (Gómez de Avellaneda 1993, 131))

Once again, we see how the novel insists on happiness in the face of death. As Enrique reproaches her for her sad face, she exclaims: “Yes, yes, I am happy” (Gómez de Avellaneda 1993, 132) (“Sí, sí, yo soy dichosa” (Gómez de Avellaneda 2001, 178)). At the end of the chapter, the narrator underlines the simultaneity of death and happiness in what seems to be an almost didactic passage: En aquella hora, D. Carlos, desafiando la tormenta, corría al embarcadero de Nuevitas, pensando que un momento de dilación podía impedirle hallar vivo a su hijo: En aquella hora Teresa, de rodillas delante de un crucifijo, en una estrecha celda, imploraba la misericordia de Dios en favor de los que ya no existían: En aquella hora enterraban en Cubitas dos cadáveres, de un hombre y de un niño; y una vieja lloraba sobre un lecho manchado de sangre, y un perro aullaba a sus pies. Y en aquella hora Carlota y Enrique eran felices, porque se amaban, porque se habían casado aquel día, y se repetían sin cesar con la voz y con las miradas: Ya soy tuya! Ya eres mía! Tales contrastes los vemos cada día en el mundo. Placer y dolor! Pero el placer es un desterrado del Cielo, que no se detiene en ninguna parte: El dolor es un hijo del infierno, que no abandona su presa sino cuando la ha despedazado (Gómez de Avellaneda 2001, 178–79). (My emphasis) (At that hour Don Carlos, defying the tempest, raced for the dock at Nuevitas, thinking that one moment of delay might keep him from finding his son alive. At that hour Teresa, kneeling before a crucifix in a narrow cell, implored God’s mercy for those who had died. At that hour in Cubitas two bodies were being interred, that of a man and that of a boy; an old woman wept over a bloodstained bed, and a dog howled at her feet. And at that hour Carlota and Enrique were happy, because they loved each other,

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because they had married that day and endlessly repeated with voice and glances: “Now I am yours!” “Now you are mine!” Such are the contrasts we see every day in the world. Joy and Sorrow! But Joy is an exile from Heaven who does not remain in any one place. Sorrow is a son of Hell who does not release his prey until he has torn it to pieces (Gómez de Avellaneda 1993, 133)). (My emphasis)

“At that hour….” (“en aquella hora”) is repeated four times. The reader is supposed to see the four separate scenes as if they were contained in one spectacular frame. Death and sorrow are brought into the picture of happiness. This fusion of death and happiness makes it impossible to maintain any optimism about real happiness in the white plantation family. Though no slave rebellion occurs, the white universe is shown to be deeply disharmonious, undermined from within by death and sorrow. The heavenly joyfulness (“placer”) is in permanent exile on earth.

Sentimentalism and Sab’s Color: Reader Identification and Empathy Sab is the suffering hero of the novel. As readers, we feel for him when we see him in pain. But who is Sab really, and what kind of empathy could nineteenth-century white readers feel for an enslaved man? As mentioned above, one of the main arguments against the novel’s abolitionist character is that Sab is too white. The color of Sab’s skin is, in fact, so white that Enrique mistakes him for a plantation owner when he meets him in the beginning of the novel. The conditions of his life are also ‘white’ in the sense that he has grown up almost as a son of the white family and has received an ‘education.’ Sab is not a field slave; he works as an overseer and has a multitude of chores inside or close to the house, including the trusted job of carrying letters back and forth, acting as tour guide (Cicerone) for the family, keeping a small garden for Carlota, etc. Though he is a passionate man, he is normally docile in his manners. He is almost as far from the world of the field slaves as Carlota is. As Jerome Branche rightly says, the novel on the whole excludes black slaves from the social world. The closeness to the white world may be problematic, seen from a representational point of view. Yet, one could argue that Sab’s similarity to his masters makes it possible to engage in a more radical critique of slavery than could have been the case had the focus been on the physical

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hardships of black slaves in the fields. Sab’s similarity makes it more difficult for white readers to distance themselves from the protagonist. As William Luis wrote already in 1998: A house slave was more familiar to the reader, someone he knew, perhaps someone living in his own house. Some may have even shared the same wet nurse with the slave. The reader has no other choice but to encounter the slave not as a monster but a human being, with feelings, yet a victim of the slavery system … . I argue that during this historical period it would have been counterproductive to depict a black who was not a passive slave. Such a description would have reinforced the fears many had about an impending slave rebellion, evident in Santo Domingo in 1791, but also in Cuba with the Aponte Conspiracy in 1812, and other uprisings, including two in Puerto Príncipe, the author’s birthplace, in 1822 and 1826. (Luis 1998, 182–83)

Sab is not described as a ‘slave character’ (an “other”), determined by his biology, but as a full human being—in fact, as an ideal man, more virtuous than the white people (Marrero Henríquez 1990, 52). Sab’s ‘docility,’ humanity and his ‘whiteness’ helped white readers to identify with him and engage emotionally with his sufferings. As argued by Lynn Hunt, this kind of emotional engagement, typical of the sentimental novel that was developed in the eighteenth century, made it possible for white readers to understand the ‘other’ as a human being with rights. The sentimental novel made it possible for readers to identify with people who were very different from themselves—for instance, people from other social classes—and, thus, paved the way for the development of universal human rights (Hunt 2008, 38). However, as Jerome Branche has pointed out, sentimentalism is tricky since it may create a superficial solidarity that spreads a “rug” over real problems and power structures (Branche 1998, 16). In her thorough study of sentimentalism in the eighteenth century, Lynn Festa also argues that sentimentalism did not bridge the gap between social and racial classes. On the contrary, she claims, sentimentalism bolstered the unequal social structure rather than undermining it: By designating certain kinds of figures as worthy of emotional expenditure and structuring the circulation of affect between subjects and objects of feeling, the sentimental mode allowed readers to identify with and feel for the plight of other people while upholding distinctive cultural and personal

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identities; it thus consolidated a sense of metropolitan community grounded in the selective recognition of the humanity of other populations. Sentimental depictions of colonial encounters refashioned conquest into commerce and converted scenes of violence and exploitation into occasions for benevolence and pity (Festa 2006, 2).

This is what Festa calls the Janus-face of Enlightenment: People were asked to feel sorry for the enslaved while accepting the power structure that kept them in their place. She adds that “sympathetic identification creates difference rather than similitude; the reader is neither invited to meld ecstatically with these wretched people nor to change places with them” (Festa 2006, 4). In Festa’s estimation, compassion and sympathy are asymmetrical, highlighting the real difficulty white people in colonial societies have in identifying with the enslaved. This asymmetry and concomitant difficulty are also present in Sab, but I would argue that the novel tries to overcome the problem in three ways: By making Sab as similar as possible (if not superior) to a white person, Avellaneda makes real identification easier. Secondly, by insisting that the main problem is not physical violence but the lack of rights, she radicalizes the consequences of identification. Finally, by connecting the emotional engagement in the love story with the question of rights, there is no identification without the acknowledgment of the natural rights of the enslaved. These three strategies make it impossible for the reader to uphold “the Janus-face of Enlightenment.” The tight connection between emotionality and rights is, I contend, an important feature of the moral sentiment of the novel. However, the ambiguity of color in the novel makes this moral sentiment very complex. Though Sab is almost white, it would be a mistake only to see him as white. Neither is he totally black. According to the narrator, he is not even a real mulatto. In the opening chapter, we hear that he presents a mix of African and European features, yet “without being a perfect mulatto. His coloring was of a yellowish white with a certain dark undertone” (Gómez de Avellaneda 1993, 28) (“[…] sin ser no obstante un mulato perfecto. Era su color de un blanco amarillento con cierto fondo oscuro” (Gómez de Avellaneda 2001, 40)). His appearance is described as unique and strange. He has a face “which, once seen, is never forgotten” (Gómez de Avellaneda 1993, 28); yet, we hear that his looks are typical of the region. As Doris Sommer has argued, rather than ‘simply’ mixing two colors, being between two colors, or bordering on white,

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Sab destabilizes the hierarchy based on color. According to Sommer, this destabilization is typical of the “region” and, in fact, of Cuba. Instead of a “whitening” of Cuba, which was suggested by antislavery intellectuals such as Domingo del Monte and José Antonio Saco, it is hinted in Avellaneda’s novel that Cuban national identity should be racially mixed or color-blind. As argued by Sommer, the destabilization of race colors serves the project of national reconciliation (Sommer 1987, 33), and it may be seen as critical toward Spanish authority in Cuba, since this authority was grounded in white domination (Casanova-Marengo 2002, 72). For these historical reasons, it is important that the color of the protagonist is ambiguous. In Cuba in the middle of the nineteenth century, the mulatto was a very common figure (Bergad 2007, 124). Though ideas of whitening Cuba were dominant, the idea also spread that mulatto or mestizo identity was situated at the heart of Cuban national identity (Kutzinski 1993, 5–6; Guillén 1995, 10; Ortiz 2002). As José Vasconcelos argued in his famous The Cosmic Race, the hybridity of race and the “mingling of bloodlines” became the “most basic distinguishing trait of the Ibero-American character” (Vasconcelos 2011, 63). Though the image of the mulatto was sometimes based on flat and conventional stereotypes,8 complex mixed-race identities in Cuba had a foundation in real life that moved them beyond stereotypical conventions. Of course, this does not mean that the social position of the mulatto should be idealized. As argued by Marilyn Miller, mulattos very often “occupied an ambiguous, overwhelmingly negative, position in narrative of the colony or emerging nation,” and the intermediary position of the mulatto was often seen “as a metaphor for corruption or fracture” (Miller 2004, 45). Indeed, Sab’s position in Avellaneda’s novel is not an easy one. He is caught between different normative social spheres and does not really belong to any of them (white, black, or red). But the strength of his position is that he is able to understand the social codes of all of these spheres and ‘mediate’ between them. He is an outsider, an orphan and a bastard, but he moves relatively smoothly in and out of all social and ethnic environments. Choosing the mulatto as the prism of social conflict

8  Werner Sollors has demonstrated this in a North American context (Sollors 1997, 220–234). He mentions especially the stereotypical “tragic mulatto” who appears in a “warring blood melodrama” in which the white blood represents intellect and black blood represents sensuousness (Sollors 1997, 243).

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makes it easier to demonstrate differences of opinion on slavery, but it complicates the drama between the oppressor and the oppressed. It also complicates the questions of reader identification and empathy. Putting it simply, it is easier to identify with somebody who looks like you. The white reader may identify with Sab because, as indicated above, he is biologically half-white and socially nearly white. Black or mulatto readers may identify with him because he is biologically half-black and enslaved as many black or mulatto people were in the period. All readers may sympathize with him since he is described as a suffering, virtuous hero. We may also understand him as an incarnation of mixed Cuban national identity, or we may more ambiguously see him as deconstructing any or all of these identities. Today, we may identify differently with Sab than people of the mid-nineteenth century would. For most readers, Sab has something familiar and something strange about him. He contains many identities within himself, but he is especially interesting as a relational figure. His positive relationship with many different people, all of whom are oppressed—black and indigenous people and white women—is at the center of the discussion of rights.

Cross-Gender and Interracial Solidarity As mentioned above, the novel’s potential radicalism lies not so much in its depiction of the individual capacity for rebellion but in its depiction of an extended form of solidarity between different kinds of oppressed people. The solidarity is cross-gender and interracial. As noted above, many readings discuss whether the novel is inclined more toward the defense of women’s rights or the rights of the enslaved. I would suggest that, in the novel, these rights are not seen as mutually exclusive but mutually supportive. In his final letter, Sab defends the rights of women and even claims that their ‘enchainment’ in marriage is worse than the bondage of slaves (Gómez de Avellaneda 2001, 194). But the solidarity between women and the enslaved is particularly obvious in the description of the surprising relationship between Sab and Teresa. Teresa is white and belongs to the dominant social class, but she is also a ‘penniless orphan,’ who lacks beauty (the social capital of women) and lives in the house of Don Carlos by his indulgence alone. While it is clear that she is grateful for the ‘generosity’ of Don Carlos and his family, gratitude is also a serious impediment to her ability to live fully. She lives in the shadow of Carlota, hiding her love for Enrique Otway. She bears her

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misfortunes so stoically that her closest friends, even Carlota, think of her as an ‘austere,’ cold spinster. She has no hope of happiness,9 let alone hope of understanding from the outside world until Sab suddenly sees her pain and recognizes her as one of those few “superior souls” who are capable of immense, selfless love. Both Sab and Teresa suffer from passionate, unrequited, and impossible love, which makes them siblings in spirit. This truth is revealed in a tableau in which they meet against all conventions in the dead of night outside of Don Carlos’ house, close to the sugarcane fields. In a long conversation, they share their pain. Sab offers the lottery ticket to Teresa, which would secure marriage to her beloved Enrique, but she selflessly refuses it. Instead, she takes the unusual step of offering to marry Sab: […] ambos somos huérfanos y desgraciados… aislados estamos los dos sobre la tierra y necesitamos igualmente compasión, amor y felicidad. Déjame, pues, seguirte a remotos climas, al seno de los desiertos…. ¡Yo seré tu amiga, tu compañera, tu hermana! (Gómez de Avellaneda 2001, 146) ([…] we are both orphans and unfortunate souls … we two are alone on earth, and each of us needs compassion, love, and happiness. Allow me, then, to follow you to remote climes, to the heart of the wilderness. I will be your friend, your companion, your sister! (Gómez de Avellaneda 1993, 108))

If this marriage had been arranged, it would have been truly revolutionary. When Enrique later suggests that Teresa is in love with Sab, Carlota is shocked and exclaims: (“Love him! […] Him, a slave! And also, Teresa is so cold … so little susceptible to love!” (Gómez de Avellaneda 1993, 130)) (“¡Amarle! […] ¡a él! ¡a un esclavo!.... luego, Teresa es tan fría… ¡tan poco susceptible de amor!” (Gómez de Avellaneda 2001, 175) As Teresa hints, to marry, they would have had to go abroad. A marriage between a white woman and a mulatto man disrupts both the racialized and gender-based hierarchies of society. In the novel, the marriage is not realized, but there is no doubt that Gómez de Avellaneda wants the reader to consider this as a serious possibility and not just a strange idea conceived in a desperate moment. Though the marriage between Teresa and Sab would not be based on love, it would be based on respect and more harmonious than the marriage between Carlota and 9  To Sab, Teresa says, “respecto a [mi felicidad] no la deseo ni la espero ya sobre la tierra” (Gómez de Avellaneda 2001, 131).

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Enrique. A genuine solidarity is, thus, created between Teresa (the oppressed woman) and Sab (the oppressed slave). Sab and Teresa are united by their common status as social ‘outcasts.’ However, even more important than the solidarity between women and enslaved people is the interracial solidarity. This is important because it is related to the construction of Cuban national identity. It has often been noted that Gómez de Avellaneda creates an opposition between the villainous English merchants, who come as intruders from the outside, and the people from the inner regions of Cuba around Puerto Príncipe (Camagüey). However, the identity of the inner region is more syncretistic than is often acknowledged. It is true that the life of the black slaves is given scant attention in the book, but it is not ignored completely. Sab repeatedly refers to it. He has friends who are black slaves, and he feels especially close to slaves from Congo, his mother’s homeland. Sab is proud of his African heritage, but the novel is not mainly about the opposing positions of black and white. It aims, rather, to deconstruct these opposing worlds through a syncretistic creation of emotional bonds between black/mulatto, white, and red. One of the marginal characters plays a huge role here, namely, Sab’s godmother Martina. Martina lives close to the caves in the region, which is endearingly called Cubitas. It is located in the interior region of Cuba, which is often associated with an original Cuban identity since it is far away from the sugar plantations and harbor areas of the northwest coast. Since Sab does not have any parents, Martina symbolically adopts him as a son and thereby gives him a home outside of the white plantation. When he is about to die he returns not to Carlota or the white family but to her. She presents herself as one of the last true Native Americans, a direct descendant of the Taino Camagüey. Martina’s story is first told by Sab as he and the white planter family (Don Carlos, Carlota, Enrique, and Teresa) are on their way to Cubitas to pay Martina a visit. There is a strange atmosphere surrounding Cubitas. Whereas nature has been depicted as idyllic and Edenic in previous scenes, this changes as soon as they approach Cubitas: A medida que se aproximaban a Cubitas el aspecto de la naturaleza era más sombrío, bien pronto desapareció casi del todo la vigorosa y variada vegetación de la tierra prieta, y la roja no ofreció más que esparramados yuraguanos, y algún ingrato jagüey, pue parecían en la noche figuras caprichosas de un mundo fantástico. (Gómez de Avellaneda 2001, 98)

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(As they approached Cubitas, the countryside became more stark: soon the black earth’s abundant and varied vegetation practically disappeared, and the red earth produced nothing more than scattered yuraguanos and here and there an unpleasant jagüey, which appeared in the night like capricious figures from a fantastic world. (Gómez de Avellaneda 1993, 71))

Indigenous plants accumulate as we get closer to the interior region, and the region is described as somber, strange, and surreal. Some critics see this scene as an early version of the Cuban magical realism that was later to be developed by Alejo Carpentier. According to Carpentier, Cuban nature and American culture are magic and baroque, characterized by a mystic self-estrangement and transformation. Whether you are white, black, or indigenous, there is a general “awareness of being Other, of being new, of being symbiotic” (Carpentier 1995, 100). America (particularly, Cuba) is a place of “symbiosis, mutations, vibrations, mestizaje” (Carpentier 1995, 98). The magic description of the natural environment around Cubitas prepares the reader for an openness toward cultural and natural hybridity. When they get closer, they see a strange light hovering over the land. According to local legend, the light is the martyred soul of the late Camagüey. Sab explains: Camagüey tratado indignamente por los advenedizos, a quienes acogiera con generosa y franca hospitalidad, fue arrojado de la cumbre de esa gran loma y su cuerpo despedezado quedó insepulto sobre la tierra regada con su sangre. Desde entonces esta tierra tornóse roja en muchas leguas a la redonda, y el alma del desventurado Cacique viene todas las noches a la loma fatal, en forma de luz, a anunciar a los descendientes de sus bárbaros asesinos la venganza del Cielo que tarde o temprano caerá sobre ellos (Gómez de Avellaneda 2001, 100–101). Camagüey, despicably treated by the invaders whom he had welcomed with generous and open hospitality, was thrown from the top of this great hill, and his shattered body lay unburied on the ground, stained red with his blood. From that day on, the earth for many leagues around turned red, and every night the soul of the unhappy chief returns to the fatal hill in the form of a light, to predict to the descendants of his savage murderers the vengeance which sooner or later Heaven will cause to fall upon them (Gómez de Avellaneda 1993, 73).

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Martina incarnates the memory of the historical atrocities committed against the aboriginal population of Cuba, and her direct relation with the ghost of Camagüey gives her the authority not only to denounce the violence but also to promise revenge on the descendants of the Spanish conquerors. As a sign of the atrocities committed in the area, the soil has turned red. The interesting thing here is that the historical atrocities and the enslavement of the indigenous people are connected with the contemporary enslavement of the black and mulatto population. Martina is the only character who seriously believes in the rebellion of the slaves. As Sab says: En sus momentos de exaltación, señor, he oído gritar a la vieja india: La tierra que fue regada con sangre una vez lo será aún otra: los descendientes de los opresores serán oprimidos, y los hombres negros serán los terribles vengadores de los hombres cobrizos (Gómez de Avellaneda 2001, 101). (In her moments of exaltation, sir, I have heard the old Indian woman shout: “The earth which once was drenched in blood will be so again: the descendants of the oppressors will be themselves oppressed, and black men will be the terrible avengers of those of copper color.” (Gómez de Avellaneda 1993, 73))

Sab does not engage in revolt, but Martina prophesizes a black rebellion. She foresees that a rebellion equal to the one at “a nearby island” (Haiti!) (Gómez de Avellaneda 1993, 102) will take place in the near future and believes that the rebellion of the black men will avenge not only themselves but also the Native American victims of the Spanish conquest. Martina dwells close to the original living place of Camagüey, and she lives close to the caves in Cubitas, which also serve as a hiding place for runaway slaves. She represents both the almost eradicated indigenous population of Cuba and the oppressed black population. The novel, thus, suggests a strong solidarity between Native Americans and enslaved blacks and mulattos that may threaten white supremacy. It is interesting that just like the color of Sab, the color of Martina is ambiguous. It is said that “none of her facial feature appeared to match her alleged origin” (Gómez de Avellaneda 1993, 78).10 10  “ninguno de los rasgos de su fisonomía parecía corresponder a su pretendido origen” (Gómez de Avellaneda 2001, 108).

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The revolution is lurking underground in the caves of Cubitas. When you enter the caves, you are struck by their beauty: beautiful, petrified figures make the caves seem like underground palaces, but even the local people never go beyond the eleventh cave, which is demarcated by a “river of blood.” It is said that the caves beyond are “the enormous jaws of Hell” (Gómez de Avellaneda 1993, 77). The uncanniness of these indigenous caves that have been used as shelter for the maroons threatens to spread to the outside via the river of blood. Thus, the novel seems to say that even if the white people feel, they can simply leave the cave and ignore the devastating effects of the slave society on indigenous, black, and mulatto populations, they will be haunted down at some point by the victims. Revolution by the enslaved or interracial marriage (between Sab and Teresa) that will eventually create a true interracial society are suggested by the novel as two possible scenarios of change. However, none of these seem to be realistic at the time of the novel. Therefore, the novel returns to the idea of convincing the dominant white population of the injustices of racialized violence. That is why the figure of Carlota is so important in the novel. She is the most valued member of the white plantation family. She is a spectator to violence, and she slowly becomes convinced of the injustice of the institution of slavery. She is the internal anchor in the novel for the external white reader, and her reaction to the violence should ideally be echoed in the reader. Carlota responds to Sab’s story about the death of the Cacique and his tribe in this way: Jamás he podido … leer tranquilamente la historia sangrienta de la Conquista de América. ¡Dios mío, cuántos horrores! Paréceme empero increíble que puedan hos hombres llegar a tales extremos de barbarie. Sin duda se exagera, porque la naturaleza humana no puede, es imposible, ser tan monstruosa. (Gómez de Avellaneda 2001, 101) (I have never been able … to calmly read the bloody history of the conquest of America. My God, how many horrors! It still seems incredible that men were able to reach such extremes of savagery. (Gómez de Avellaneda 1993, 73))

Enrique makes fun of her compassion for past victims and atrocities— which, he says, might even be fictitious. However, she insists that atrocities took place against a peaceful population that lived in harmony with nature:

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Aquí vivían felices e inocentes aquellos hijos de la naturaleza: este suelo virgen no necesitaba ser regado con el sudor de los esclavos para producirles: ofrecíales por todas partes sombras y frutos, aguas y flores, y sus entrañas no habían sido despedezadas para arrancarle con mano avara sus escondidos tesores. (Gómez de Avellaneda 2001, 102) (Here those children of nature lived in happiness and innocence: this virgin soil did not need to be watered with the sweat of slaves to be productive: everywhere it gave shade and fruit, water and flowers, and its entrails had not been rent asunder so that its hidden treasures could be torn out by greedy hands. (Gómez de Avellaneda 1993, 73–74))

There are clear and direct echoes here of Bartolomé de Las Casas’ denunciation of violence in his Brevísima relación de la destruición de las Indias (1542/1552). Like Las Casas, Carlota denounces the brutal killing of Native Americans for the sake of gold (“hidden treasures”) grasped by “greedy hands.” The denunciation of violence is followed by a highly idealistic image of the paradisiacal life of Natives before the arrival of the Spanish—a life, Carlota confesses, she would have liked to live together with Enrique: ¡Oh, Enrique ! Lloro no haber nacido entonces y que tú, indio como yo, me hicieses una cabaña de palmas en donde gozamos una vida de amor, de inocencia y de libertad (Gómez de Avellaneda 2001, 102). (Oh, Enrique! I lament not having been born then when you, an Indian like me, would have built me a palm hut where we would have enjoyed a life of love, innocence, and freedom. (Gómez de Avellaneda 1993, 74))

Like Las Casas’ idealization of the Edenic life of Native Americans before the arrival of the Spaniards, Carlota creates a highly idealistic image of their lives in close harmony with an abundant and generous nature. This idealism may seem naïve and out of place in relation to Martina’s at once cynical, rebellious, and pathetic position. But Carlota’s vision preserves some moral value in the novel in the sense that it points to a cherished view of natural harmony. Rather than a racist conception of ‘wild savages,’ it is a kind of Eco-Romantic vision demonstrated by the fact that Carlota longs to live like that herself. Martina, thus, functions as a symbol of the utopian idea of social egalitarianism, characterized by a deep

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relationship with nature—a form of eco-social egalitarianism (Méndez Rodenas 2017, 158, 165). Once they arrive at Martina’s hut, this vision is followed up by a tableau of social egalitarianism. Impressed by the emotional scenes that went before, Don Carlos promises to give Sab his freedom. They all sit down at the same table and have a meal together. Martina is at the head of the table. Sab is at the other end. José Gomariz claims that Sab is admitted at the table only because he retains his subaltern position and does not threaten to change the order of the slave society (Gomariz 2009, 114). So, the idyll is only superficial. Nevertheless, Sab sits down at the table as a free man, and Avellaneda stresses that it is not Don Carlos but Martina who assumes the position of majesty at the head of the table. With Sab at the other end, the white family is symbolically ‘framed’ by an indigenous person and a mulatto. The fact that Enrique is deeply appalled by this and loses his appetite proves that this is an egalitarian gesture. Had the novel ended there, it would have been with an image of perfect harmony among good people of different races, excluding only the bad white man (Enrique). However, as we know, the novel ends with bitterness and death: the reverse image of reconciliatory justice. The last chapter of the novel takes place five years after Carlota’s and Enrique’s wedding and Sab’s death. Martina has also died, and Teresa is dying in the convent. Carlota hastens to her bed to say her final farewell. Teresa gives her Sab’s letter, and Carlota finally understands that Sab was one of the superior souls and that he was consumed by a hopeless love for her. The love in her marriage with Enrique has dissipated after she understood his calculating rationality. Her only consolation now is Sab’s letter, which shows her that ideal love did exist. In the end, Carlota spends three months in Cubitas, tending to Sab’s grave like Martina used to do. Here again, a magical transformation occurs. Carlota covers her face, and the local villagers believe that she is the ghost of Martina, returning to take care of the grave. The local rumor turns Carlota into a Native American, a truly tropical woman. This symbolic transformation concludes the novel: ¿[H]abrá podido olvidar la hija de los trópicos, al esclavo que descansa en una humilde sepultura bajo aquel hermoso Cielo? (Gómez de Avellaneda 2001, 197)

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([W]ill the daughter of the tropics have been able to forget the slave who rests in a simple grave under that magnificent sky? (Gómez de Avellaneda 1993, 147))

While she was alive, Martina maintained the memory of the suffering of both indigenous and enslaved peoples. Now that Martina is dead, Carlota, transformed into an indigenous character, takes over her role. The indigenous and the mulatto stories are brought together. The novel also ‘promises’ that future generations will not forget these crimes. They are inscribed in the nation’s very landscape. Sab’s body has become part of the land. Blood is running in the caves of Cubitas, and the soil has turned red because of historical suffering. As Jenny Leving Jacobson has argued, “violence [is] forever inscribed in the earth-body of the Cuban nation” (Jacobson 2017, 187).

Forensic Melodrama and Interracial Solidarity The relationship among black people, mulattos, whites of different degrees of emotional capacity, and Native Americans complicates the emotional structure of the novel and converts what, at first, seems like a deeply asymmetrical, patronizing emotional pattern into a relation of solidarity. It is on this emotional solidarity that the novel builds its moral sentiment. However, as mentioned earlier, even though the book seems to believe in this solidarity among races, it is not optimistic about its realization on a larger social scale, and this is also one of the reasons the whole book is shrouded in a feeling of melancholy. As Colleen C. O’Brien observes: On one level, Sab addresses questions of equality and entitlement through romantic metaphors of a metaphysical connection to a sublime natural world inhabited by the spirits of slain African and indigenous rebels. In contrast to the contractual and commercial relations between white men, a sublime energy connects insurgents to nature and to one another —whether they are unruly white women, indigenes, or former slaves. Unfortunately, these communications can take place only under soulful, rather than physical, circumstances because Avellaneda reduces Cuba’s First Nations to a tribe of spirits. (O’Brien 2013, 60)

O’Brien argues that, in her belief in the language of the soul, Gómez de Avellaneda has a lot in common with the North American Transcendentalists

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(O’Brien 2013, 56), and one could argue that Gómez de Avellaneda’s sense of rebellion is too spiritually conceived to be of any relevance for an understanding of social matters. However, as I have argued, it is exactly in these spirited moments that solidarity is created and that the possibility of an egalitarian social justice can even be imagined. The emotional impact of these moments is quintessential in convincing the reader of the need for rebellion or social transformation. This emotional impact is much more important than an explicit description of a concrete rebellion. Melancholy is overwhelmingly present. It is produced by the blatant injustices of the system of slavery and the lack of hope for a better and more just world. Historically speaking, melancholy in this specific period in Cuba seems natural because attempts at social revolt had been defeated: especially, the unsuccessful revolt led by José Antonio Aponte in 1812, an uprising that was suppressed almost immediately after which the leaders were executed. Unlike other regions in America, slavery in Cuba did not fade in the nineteenth century. Due to the revolution in Haiti, any signs of a quest for freedom in Cuba were extinguished immediately by local authorities. It is no wonder that, in the 1830s, it was difficult to see how a new and more just social order was possible. Yet, melancholy in Sab is not the same as resignation. Melancholy is one of the most complex and contradictory of feelings. In its history, the concept has been associated with the body and the mind, with pathological states of an individual, with evil, or with poetic and contemplative modes (Bowring 2016, 6–10). According to Freud, melancholy is a sign of an internalized sorrow, an open wound that is unhealed (Freud, Mourning and Melancholia). However, as Jacky Bowring has argued, melancholy is not only a feeling of sorrow; it can also afford a “productive solitude.” A melancholic person may have a “capacity for contemplation” (Bowring 2016, 6). In the Protestant tradition, melancholy has very often been associated with resignation and intense grief or even narcissistic self-obsession (Bowring 2016, 15). In the Catholic tradition, from the Baroque period onward, melancholy has been associated with the clash of passionate but unmediated contradictions (Maravall 1986, 158, 202). As I have argued, the use of the melancholic mode in Sab is never just resignation. Despite its contemplative character, the clash between contradictory passions is always lurking beneath the surface. This is also what brings the melancholic mode closer to melodrama. As concepts, melancholy and melodrama may seem contradictory in the sense that

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melancholy is introverted and subtle while melodrama is extroverted and extreme. Yet, as Peter Brooks reminds us, melodrama also builds on a dramatic contradiction between surface and depth. It combines the theatricality of performance with the enigma of inner drama. Through this tension, the reader and spectator are kept fascinated and captivated in a moral reflection. The emotional drama of the story impresses on the reader a dual awareness of natural equality and social inequality. Its critical quality rests in this duality. The novel’s emotions are powerful as they are in all melodramas, but they are kept in check by tableaux vivants that force the reader to reflect on the moral content of emotions. I have analyzed several tableaux, some of them depicting love and ideal equality, some depicting death and real inequality. In the first one, Carlota is extremely sorrowful but seems to transcend this sorrow in a poetic and metaphysical gesture toward God. This tableau’s form is close to eighteenth-­century painterly tableaux, but it is permeated by nineteenth-­ century social Romanticism and contains, as I have argued, a radical understanding of natural rights. In the tableaux of death, individual pain is visualized, but this pain is inscribed in an image of national suffering, related directly to social inequality. The novel has the blood of dying men flow from Cubitas’ caves and pollute the very soil of Cuba with the evidence of the crimes. The forensic claim of the novel is directly related to the theatricality of the tableaux. Sab’s love and his passionate protest, which originates in a reflection on the natural order of life, form the moral cri de la nature that ought to awaken a society that has been dulled to the radical injustice of slavery. In the novel, the focus is on physical suffering, but the wounds, the illnesses, and the blood are caused by or are symbolic representations of the greater moral evil: the denial of rights to a huge number of people in the country. Very often, melodrama is considered a conservative genre which, in the words of Kooy and Cox, was fit for the topic of slavery since it favored dramatic plots with villains and victims but basically “reassured audiences that, regardless of any momentary disruptions, the patriarchal order of God, king, father, and overseer remained secure” (Kooy and Cox 2012, 462). But, in Sab, melodrama does not reside in the plot, nor does it reassure the reader of the justice of colonial order. On the contrary, the use of melodramatic emotions in tableaux vivants forces the reader to feel the

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violent clash between the ideal and the real and also to reflect on the moral injustices that are inherent in the political institution of slavery. The genre of the tableau has been praised for its expressive force and its ability to create a common bond between spectators thanks to the evocation of common tears (Diderot 1965, 80). But, as David J. Denby writes in his book on Sentimental Narrative and the Social Order in France 1760–1820, the function of the tableau may also be to facilitate moral reflection (Denby 1994, 77). As I have argued, emotions in Sab do not only create sympathy with the main characters, they create awareness of social injustice in the reader. I have tried to shift the focus from plot to form and from the explicit tragedy of the story to the potential reaction of the reader. In the debate about whether Sab is an abolitionist text or not and whether emotions create solidarity or not, it is essential to consider the aesthetic form through which emotions are conveyed to and awakened in the reader. Though Sab is not a revolutionary hero, the form of the novel invites readers to be revolutionary or, at least, encourages them to reflect on why they ought to be. The aesthetic framing of the melodramatic tableaux vivants simultaneously strengthens a vivid, forensic demonstration of the social, symbolic and physical death that follow from the institution of slavery and the invocation of the natural rights of the enslaved.

References Balboa y Troya de Quesada, Silvestre de. 1608. Espejo de Paciencia. Relacion del caso, en octavas. https://www.camagueycuba.org/espejo_de_paciencia.htm. Benítez-Rojo, Antonio. 1996. The repeating Island: The Caribbean and the postmodern perspective. 2. ed, Post-contemporary interventions. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Bergad, Laird W. 2007. The comparative histories of slavery in Brazil, Cuba, and the United States, new approaches to the Americas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bowring, Jacky. 2016. Melancholy and the landscape: Locating sadness, memory and reflection in the landscape, Routledge research in landscape and environmental design. London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. Branche, Jerome. 1998. Ennobling savagery? Sentimentalism and the subaltern in “Sab”. Afro-Hispanic Review 17 (2): 12–23. Brooks, Peter. 1976. The melodramatic imagination: Balzac, Henry James, melodrama, and the mode of excess. New Haven: Yale University Press.

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Carpentier, Alejo. 1995. The baroque and the marvellous real. In Magical realism: Theory, history, community, ed. Lois Parkinson Zamora and Wendy B.  Faris, 89–108. Durham, NC, USA: Duke University Press. Casanova-Marengo, Ilia. 2002. El intersticio de la colonia : ruptura y mediacion en la narrativa antiesclavista cubana, Nexos y Diferencias. Estudios de la Cultura de América Latina. Vol. 3. Madrid: Iberoamericana. Childs, Matt D. 2006. The 1812 Aponte rebellion in Cuba and the struggle against Atlantic slavery, envisioning Cuba. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Davies, Catherine. 2013. Introduction to Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda: Sab. In Sab, ed. Catherine Davies, 1–29. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Denby, David. 1994. Sentimental narrative and the social order in France, 1760–1820, Cambridge studies in French. Vol. 47. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Diderot, Denis. 1965. Oeuvres esthétiques. Paris: Garnier. Diderot, Denis, Else Marie Bukdahl, and Annette Lorenceau. 1984. Diderot : Salon de 1765 : édition critique et annoté, [Salons]. Vol. 2. Paris: Hermann. Diderot, Denis. 1995. Diderot on Art. Denis Diderot 1713–1784. Ed. John Goodman. New Haven: Yale University Press. Festa, Lynn. 2006. Sentimental figures of empire in eighteenth-century Britain and France. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Fried, Michael. 1988. Absorption and theatricality: Painting and beholder in the age of Diderot. [new]. ed. Chicago, Ill: The University of Chicago Press. Gomariz, José. 2009. Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda y la intelectualidad reformista cubana. Raza, blanqueamiento e identidad cultural en “Sab”. Caribbean Studies 37 (1): 97–118. https://doi.org/10.1353/crb.0.0105. Gómez de Avellaneda, Gertrudis. 1993. Sab; and, autobiography, The Texas pan American series. 1st. ed. Austin: University of Texas Press. Trans. Nina M. Scott. ———. 2001. Sab. Manchester [England]; New  York: Manchester University Press. Distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave. Grau-Lleveria, Elena. 2010. El romanticismo social en Dos mujeres de Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda. Bulletin of Spanish Studies (2002) 87 (1): 31–49. https://doi.org/10.1080/14753821003679395. Guillén, Nicolás. 1995. Sóngoro Cosongo : poemas mulatos. La Habana: Union. Hazard, Samuel. 1871. Cuba with pen and pencil. Chicago: Hartford Publishing Company. Hunt, Lynn Avery. 2008. Inventing human rights: A history. Paperback ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. Jacobson, Jenna Leving. 2017. Nation, violence, memory: Interrupting the foundational discourse in Sab. Hispanic Issues on Line 18: 174.

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Jiménez, Javier. 2015. Costumbrista description, romantic gaze: The insufficiencies of literary discourse in Sab. Romance Studies: A Journal of the University of Wales 33 (1): 56–67. https://doi.org/10.1179/0263990415Z.00000000086. Kelly, Edith L. 1945. La Avellaneda’s Sab and the political situation in Cuba. The Americas (Washington. 1944) 1 (3): 303–316. https://doi.org/10.2307/ 978156. Kirkpatrick, Susan. 1989. Las románticas: Women writers and subjectivity in Spain, 1835–1850. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kooy, Dana Van, and Jeffrey N. Cox. 2012. Melodramatic slaves. Modern Drama 55 (4): 459–475. https://doi.org/10.1353/mdr.2012.0066. Kutzinski, Vera M. 1993. Sugar's secrets: Race and the erotics of Cuban nationalism, new world studies. Charlottesville, Va: University Press of Virginia. Luis, William. 1998. How to read Sab. Revista de estudios hispánicos (University, Ala.) 32 (1): 175. Maravall, Jose Antonio. 1986. Culture of the baroque: Analysis of a historical structure. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Marrero Henríquez, José Manuel. 1990. Amor, patria e ilustración en el esclavo abolicionista de “Sab”. Anales de literatura hispanoamericana XIX: 47–57. Méndez Rodenas, Adriana. 2017. Picturing Cuba: Romantic ecology in Gómez de Avellaneda’s Sab (1841). Hispanic Issues on Line 18: 155. Miller, Marilyn Grace. 2004. Rise and fall of the cosmic race the cult of mestizaje in Latin America. 1st. ed. Austin: University of Texas Press. O’Brien, Colleen. 2013. Desire, conquest, and insurrection in Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda’s Sab. Vol. 56. University of Virginia Press. Ortiz, Fernando. 2002. Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azúcar : (advertencia de sus contrastes agrarios, económicos, históricos y sociales, su etnografía y su transculturación). 1st. ed., Letras Hispánicas. Madrid: Cátedra. Pastor, Brigida. 1997. Symbiosis between slavery and feminism in Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda’s “Sab”? Bulletin of Latin American Research 16 (2): 187–196. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1470-­9856.1997.tb00050.x. Read, Malcolm K. 2004. Racism and commodity character structure: The case of Sab. Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies 10 (1): 61–84. https:// doi.org/10.1080/1470184042000236288. Romeo Fivel-Démoret, Sharon. 1989. The production and consumption of propaganda literature: The Cuban anti-slavery novel. Bulletin of Hispanic studies (Liverpool: Institute of Hispanic Studies: 1949) 66 (1): 1–12. https://doi.org/1 0.1080/1475382892000366001. Sánchez, Manuel De Paz. 1998. "El Lugareño" contra la esclavocracia: las cartas de Gaspar Betancourt y Cisneros (1803–1866). Revista de Indias 58 (214): 617–636. https://doi.org/10.3989/revindias.1998.i214.750. Servera Baño, José. 2014. Introducción, Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda: Sab, Letras Hispánicas. Cátedra.

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Sollors, Werner. 1997. Neither Black nor White yet both: Thematic explorations of interracial literature. New York: Oxford University Press. Sommer, Doris. 1987. Sab c'est moi. Hispamérica (College Park) 16 (48): 25–37. ———. 1991. Foundational fictions: The national romances of Latin America, Latin American literature and culture. Vol. 8. Berkeley: University of California Press. Vasconcelos, José. 2011. Mestizaje. In The prophet of race, ed. Ilan Stavans, 45–90. New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press. Ward, Thomas. 1999. Nature and civilization in Sab and the nineteenth-century novel in Latin America. Hispanofila 126 (126): 25–40. William, Luis. 2014. Literary bondage: Slavery in Cuban narrative. University of Texas Press. Williams, Claudette. 2008. Cuban anti-slavery narrative through postcolonial eyes: Gertrudis Gomez de Avellanedas “Sab”. Bulletin of Latin American Research 27 (2): 155–175. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1470-­9856.2008. 00261.x.

CHAPTER 7

Tragic Theatricality: Vulnerability and Rights in Juan Francisco Manzano’s Autobiography of a Slave and Zafira

Remember, sir, when you read this, that I am a slave; and a slave is a dead soul to his master. (“[…] acuérdese su merced, cuando lea, que yo soy esclavo; y que el esclavo es un ser muerto ante su señor” (Manzano 2007, 125) (my translation).) (Juan Francisco Manzano in a letter to Domingo del Monte, 25 June 1835)

The autobiography by Juan Francisco Manzano Autobiografía de un esclavo (Autobiography of a Slave), written in 1835, is the only autobiography composed in Spanish by a slave. Juan Francisco Manzano (1797–1854) was a domestic slave in Cuba from birth until he was freed in 1836.1 The autobiography is a testimony to the cruelty of slavery in Cuba at a moment when the system of slavery was expanding and permeated society at all levels. It was written at the request of the antislavery intellectual Domingo del Monte, who stressed that he was both interested in creating 1  All references to the Spanish version are to the edition by William Luis in 2007: Autobiografía del esclavo poeta y otros escritos. References to the English translation are to Evelyn Picon Garfield’s translation in the bilingual edition by Ivan A. Schulman in 1996: Autobiography of a Slave/Autobiografía de un esclavo.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 K.-M. Simonsen, Slavery and the Forensic Theatricality of Human Rights in the Spanish Empire, Palgrave Studies in Literature, Culture and Human Rights, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31531-2_7

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a new, authentic, and realistic Cuban literature and interested in genuine testaments to the brutality of slavery that could be used in the general antislavery fight. He insisted that Manzano tell his story in detail. Though hesitant, Manzano wrote an autobiography that was to become an important and unique text in the Spanish and international antislavery archive. The autobiography was written in a colloquial language in 1835 while Manzano was still a slave; it was revised for grammatical and syntactical errors by the writer Anselmo Suárez y Romero (Luis 2007, 18),2 who sent it to the Irish abolitionist Richard Robert Madden (1798–1886). Madden had been superintendent for freed slaves in Cuba 1835–1839 and had first-hand impressions of the hard life of the enslaved people in Cuba. When he translated and published Manzano’s autobiography in 1840, he added some poems by Manzano and some of his own essays on the unacknowledged cruelty of slavery in Cuba. The long title of Madden’s book reveals its hybrid character: Poems by a Slave in the Island of Cuba, recently liberated; translated from the Spanish by R.R. Madden, M.D., with a History of the early life of the Negro Poet written by Himself; to which are prefixed two pieces descriptive of Cuban Slavery and the Slave Traffic. This publication in English immediately involved Manzano in an international abolitionist movement (Miller 2010, 175; Sweeney 2004, 403). One critic has called the publication of Manzano’s autobiography a “sideshow” to Madden’s own abolitionist campaign (Romney 2015, 239). Inside Cuba, Manzano’s text circulated clandestinely. In the words of Jerome Branche, it became “the historical point of departure for what has been canonized as early Cuban ‘antislavery’ writing” (Branche 2001, 63). But it was not until 1937 that the first complete Spanish version was printed in an edition by José Luciano Franco, based on Anselmo Suárez y Romero’s version. The Anglophone readership relied on Madden’s English translation. However, Madden adjusted the text somewhat to suit his abolitionist purpose. As William Luis has argued, his translation is so different from the original that it should be considered a different text (Luis 2007, 19).3 Since then, new translations have appeared, and the autobiography has also circulated in different Spanish versions—so many 2  Anselmo Suárez Romero (1818–1878) later wrote the abolitionist novel, Francisco, El ingenio o las delicias del campo (The Sugar Mill or the Delights of the Country) (1838–39), responding to an invitation from R.R. Madden. 3  For instance, Richard Robert Madden omitted the controversial sentence in which Manzano says he loves his mistress (Miller 2010, 175).

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that Sylvia Molloy has called the autobiography “an inordinately manipulated text” that, in its composition and publication, is “dispossessed” (Molloy 1991, 37).4 Thanks to the complicated history of the text’s production and publication, Manzano’s text has also been called a rhizomatic network text that links the peripheries of different spaces (e.g., Cuba, Britain, United States, and Spain). It is “culturally specific, yet expanding through a process of migration and exchange” (Sweeney 2004, 402). The publication history of Manzano’s text mirrors the ambiguous geopolitical situation that, according to Fernando Ortiz, is so typical of Cuba, especially in the nineteenth century: economic growth (especially in the sugar industry) was dependent upon international relations. At the same time, international networks grew among abolitionists. Cuban politicians had to balance between these international relations, the interventionist politics of the Spanish Crown and Parliament, and the complex local political climate, the economic interests of the saccharocracy, and the growing nationalist spirit of Cuba that would later lead to the war of independence (Ortiz 2002, 140). The publication and reception of Manzano’s autobiography reflect this context. It is both an important local and international text. However, despite its political importance, it did not attract much scholarly interest until relatively recent. According to Fionnghuala Sweeney, the reason for this lack of interest was its unruly form, which made it “contradict, or at best frustrate the expectations of the slave-narrative form” (Sweeney 2004, 406). It is different in style, tone and structure from autobiographies in English—for instance, by Frederick Douglass and Olaudah Equiano and its ability to present a strong ‘voice from below’ has been doubted. Sweeney even calls it a “dis-autobiography” (Sweeney 2004, 409).

4  In 1852, Suárez y Romero’s version was copied by the abolitionist Nicolás Azcarate, but this version was virtually unknown until it was discovered by Lee Williams in the 1980s (Luis 2007, 19). In 1878, a minor fragment was published in Spanish by Francisco Calcagno. In the twentieth century, two versions came out: a bilingual version by Ivan Schulman, who used a translation by Evelyn Picon Garfield, which was based on Franco’s version (1996), and a version by Abdeslam Azougarh, who was the first modern scholar to consult the original manuscript by Manzano. He published a version of the text with philological notes (Azougarh 2000). Luis’ version is based on Suárez y Romero’s edited version from 1839. For an overview of editions of the autobiography before Luis’ version, see also Damián V. Solano Escolano (2021, 116).

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Many readers have been frustrated that Manzano seems to be and, indeed, explicitly describes himself as a weak and fearful man. Some critics condemn him for his weakness and see it as an internalization of the white racist code (Mar 2012, 55) or as a sign that his will has been “annihilated by his bondage” (Schulman 1996, 9). He has been called “unmanly” (Sweeney 2004, 410) and self-infantilizing (Friol 1977, 58). Recently, other critics have argued that his (alternative form of) writing serves as a means to create an independent subjectivity and may be seen as an act of resistance (Draper 2002, 11) or a way of deliberately creating terror in the reader (Escolano 2021, 123). It has been claimed that “beneath Manzano’s meek exterior,” there is “a continuing rebellious strain” (Branche 2001, 81). In my reading, I shall agree with those critics (Branche and others) who claim there is “a rebellious strain” in Manzano but instead of seeing that as being in contradiction with his “meek exterior,” I’ll argue that the resistance is tightly connected with the ‘meekness’ or the vulnerability. Manzano’s vulnerability is primarily situational and relational. It is not an inherent part of his moral character. In fact, he describes himself as a strong, normally happy, and lively person who only by cruel treatment has been reduced to weakness. As Manzano says in a letter to Del Monte from 25 June 1835, being a slave is like being socially dead: “[R]emember, sir, when you read, that I am a slave; and a slave is a dead soul to his master” (“[…] acuérdese su merced, cuando lea, que you soy esclavo; y que el esclavo es un ser muerto ante su señor”) (Manzano 2007, 125). Manzano is not naturally weak but he takes the weakness upon him. Demonstrating the violence against him is important for the denunciation of the crime of slavery, ‘embracing’ the state of vulnerability becomes a way of carving a new way to human rights and dignity. In contrast with the readers who see his weakness as a sign of submission, I shall argue that Manzano’s vulnerability serves a moral and political purpose, namely that of deconstructing a normative understanding of human autonomy and agency. I draw on recent research that argues for a new understanding of human rights that grow out of the “wounds” and the ability to be “dispossessed” (Butler and Athanasiou 2013, ix). Rather than building rights on the positivist affirmation of the paradigmatic liberal subject, this ‘new’ understanding builds on the acknowledgment of

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our “susceptibility to suffering” (Ganteau and Onega 2017).5 As Alexandra Schultheis-Moore has argued, a focus on vulnerability makes it possible to move “beyond the false dichotomy between the liberal subject and the victim” and to “dismantle the logic of the liberal subject of rights” (Moore 2016, 9). Following Kate Brown’s distinctions, one could say that Manzano demonstrates multiple forms of vulnerability: natural vulnerability due to his poetic sensibility, vulnerability due to social disadvantage as a slave, a “situational” vulnerability due to the arbitrary punishments to which he is subjected, and a “universal” vulnerability that demonstrates his bodily and psychological vulnerability as a human being (Brown 2015, 28). Manzano openly confronts all these forms of vulnerability and by so doing, he creates a non-heroic basis for solidarity and rights. Manzano is no Toussaint Louverture. He is a tragic figure but he also uses the tragic mode and genre strategically. This strategy becomes especially clear if the autobiography is interpreted in light of Manzano’s tragedy Zafira, which was printed in 1842. Although this drama takes place in Africa in the sixteenth century and deals with a specific historical conflict, several critics have argued that it may be read as an allegory of colonialism and slavery in Cuba in Manzano’s own time (Olsen 2007, 138; Miller 2008, 52). Zafira is a classical tragedy in five acts that follows an Aristotelean form, but its themes and questions are highly modern and politically controversial. In the drama, political agency and heroic struggle are undermined by democratic pragmatism on the part of marginalized persons (be they women or slaves), Turkish enemies, and eventually the male war hero of the drama himself. Read together, the Autobiography and Zafira give us an alternative vision of the function of vulnerability with respect to the creation of social liberation and equality. I shall argue that Manzano uses the classical tragic form to substantialize what might otherwise only be felt as individual suffering. The classical tragic form seems a good choice because it is focused on conflict between opposing, substantial social forces (Hegel 1998, 220). As 5  Building on Didier Fassin and Richard Rechtman’s study The Empire of trauma: An Enquiry into the Condition of Victimhood (2009), Susana Onega and Jean-Michel Ganteau argue that we live in an age dominated by the trauma paradigm. They see the new “ascendency of the wound” as directly connected with the effects of two world wars (including the holocaust) and processes of decolonization (Ganteau and Onega 2017, 1).

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noted by Søren Kierkegaard, modern tragedy is too focused on individual suffering to be able to raise substantial social questions (Kierkegaard 2013, 137). However, transposing the form of classical tragedy onto modern situations of social oppression is not easily done because the traditional form demands a certain guilt in the protagonist. As Kierkegaard argues, if there is no guilt (or if there is too much guilt), there is no tragedy. Suffering alone is not enough. Guilt is necessary in a certain measure (Kierkegaard 2013, 133). According to Christoph Menke, who has done a thorough analysis of the tragedy of Oedipus: A fate can be called “tragic” on the model of Oedipus Tyrannus only when it is through the very act by which an agent aims to preserve his or her good fortune that the sudden transformation of happiness into misery enters his or her life. (Menke 2009, 11)

This is the reason, according to Menke, that Imre Kertész “rejects talk of the ‘tragedy of European Jewry’” (Menke 2009, 11). In situations of extreme suffering, imposed by external agents, the traditional concept of tragedy seems to fall short since it implies an “intelligible connection between one’s deed and its consequence, one’s ruin” (Menke 2009, 11). It would, of course, be outrageous to suggest that slaves are guilty of their own enslavement. Slavery is never tragic in that sense. But classical tragedy bestows a certain agency to the victims, even when they are imprisoned and killed, like Antigone. The agency is never personal. In classical tragedy, individual suffering represents an active principle effective in the social sphere, for instance that of natural rights. As argued by Jean-Pierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet, tragedy is a social art form and even the individualization of the hero does not make him an individual “person” (Vernant and Vidal-Naquet 1988, 24). Tragedy allows the oppressed to reformulate the position of weakness and turn it into a political position. Though modern tragedy is not identical with the ancient Greek form, the genre facilitates the appearance of a substantial social antagonism while simultaneously undermining moral Manichaeism. Tragedy makes it possible to ‘embrace’ suffering and dispossession in what Hegel would call a “substantial” way, related to the social norms and hierarchies. Thus, in both Manzano’s autobiography and his drama Zafira, suffering and personal guilt is circumscribed by structural forces. After a brief summary and a reflection on tragedy and the forensic, tragic structure of the autobiography, I shall reflect on the vulnerability of

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the narrator. I shall then analyze the function of vulnerability in the tragedy Zafira. At the end, I shall make a brief comparison to shed light on how the tragic form may be used to transcend individual suffering and how vulnerability may be used strategically to advocate for political equality.

The Autobiography of a Slave Juan Francisco Manzano wrote his autobiography in 1835 while he was still a slave. The autobiography was originally planned in two parts. At the end of Part 1, Manzano says, “We shall see what happened to me later in the second part of this story which follows” (Manzano 1996, 135). However, according to William Luis, Part II was lost or never written (Manzano 2007, 116). At a first look, the autobiography (the part that we know) assumes a typical narrative structure known from other slave narratives, for instance, in North America (Olney 1984, 50–51). It is a first-person narrative that begins by discussing the protagonist’s (happy) childhood; it then relates in detail the harshness of life in slavery, recounting episodes of brutal whippings and beatings, episodes of isolation and deprivation of food and water, etc. It tells the story of how Manzano learned to read and write— primarily, on his own but also to a certain extent aided by his first benign mistress. He narrates how a free colored man urged him to flee and, finally, how he decided to escape from slavery. However, in a number of ways, the autobiography differs from other slave narratives in the international canon. Manzano is a domestic slave, and he grows up in a totally feminized universe. It is significant that he depicts his childhood in the white family as extremely happy. It is also an anomaly that he does not start with his own birth but with the childhood of his mother, María del Pilar Manzano, who was a beautiful and favored girl in the household of the Marchioness de Justiz. This prehistory places Manzano in a situation of privilege, close to the white family. His mother was allowed to marry, and his father rose in the social hierarchy through this marriage. Juan Francisco grows up almost as an integrated part of the white family. He is not allowed to play with black children. Soon, he demonstrates both his vivacity and his proclivity for learning. The white family is Christian, and he learns religious sermons by heart. He is educated as a tailor by his father. Though he notes that he is included in the household as “entertainment” for his mistress and that she dominates

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him so much that she takes the place both of mother and father (he calls her “mama mía”), Manzano consistently talks of this period as a happy childhood (Manzano 2007, 85).6 Perhaps, it seems happy to him in retrospect, given that this ‘happy’ period is followed by a period of much pain and abuse, a more typical element of slave narratives. The shift occurs when Manzano is about twelve years old (1809). His mistress, the Marchioness of Justiz, dies. He spends a few years with his godmother and is then transferred to the house of the Marchioness de Prado Ameno, who turns out to be an unpredictable mistress, one who for the slightest offence sends the young boy into frightening isolation at night and has him whipped and beaten. Even when he is dressed in fine clothes and works as a page for his mistress, who allows him to accompany her to the theater, the opera, dances and tertulias, the Marchioness de Prado Ameno never lets him doubt her power over him. What is unusual here is not the brutality but the total arbitrariness of punishment, the frequent reversals of Manzano’s position within the household and the psychological terror he endures within the domestic and feminine sphere. This psychological terror, which borders on sadism, is combined with moments of compassion and love and has been called ‘perverse mothering’ (Aching 2015, 81f). Manzano follows his mistress like a “lapdog” (“falderillo”) (Manzano 2007, 60), but he also tells us, “For the least childish mischief, I was locked up for twenty-four hours in a coal cellar” (Manzano 1996, 57):7 Aquí, después de llevar recios azotes me ponían con orden y pena de gran castigo al que me diese una gota de agua; lo que sufría aquejado del hambre y la sed, atormentado del miedo, en un lugar tan soturno como apartado de la casa […] Tanto se temía en la casa aquella orden que nadie se atrevía, aunque hubiera coyuntura, a darme un comino. (Manzano 2007, 87–88) (Here, after suffering brutal lashes, I was locked up with orders that anyone who might give me even a drop of water was to be severely punished. Such an order was so feared in that house that no one, absolutely no one, dared 6  In the version edited by Ivan A. Schulman, Manzano says his childhood was like “wandering through a garden of very beautiful flowers, a series of joys” (“corriendo por un jardín de bellísimas flores, una serie de felicidades”) (Manzano 1996, 50–51). This phrase is omitted in William Luis’ version. 7  “Por la más leve maldad propia de muchacho me encerraban por más de veinte y cuatro horas en una carbonera” (Manzano 2007, 87).

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give me as much as a crumb even if there were an opportunity to do so. What I suffered in that jail is unimaginable, afflicted as I was with hunger and thirst, and tormented by fear. (Manzano 1996, 57))8

According to Manzano, such chastisement was so frequent that “a week did not go by in which I did not suffer this kind of punishment two or three times” (Manzano 1996, 59).9 He is punished for trivial things— for example, not hearing when his mistress calls him, falling asleep late at night as they drive home from some game or tertulia when he is supposed to hold the lamp, spending too much time in the lavatory (due to indigestion), talking too much, etc. He is punished so often, he tells us, that, from the age of thirteen to fourteen, his natural joy and vivacity of character turn into melancholy and incurable depression (“abatimiento incurable” (Manzano 2007, 88)). Some punishments are simply mean and humiliating such as when the Marchioness punishes Manzano for reciting poetry to the children by having him tied up, gagged, and placed on a stool, wearing signs in the back and front. Whenever the Marchioness wishes to punish him more harshly, she has him shaven, dressed in rags and “led away like the vilest criminal” (Manzano 1996, 76). He is then sent off to a sugar plantation (El Molino) with strict orders to the overseer to give him twenty-five lashes each morning and more in the afternoon (Manzano 1996, 80). After five years and an especially harsh punishment that sends him into a state of serious depression, he is given to Don Nicolás with whom he stays approximately three years. Here, he teaches himself to write despite Don Nicolás’ admonition against it. His movements are highly restricted; he is not allowed on the street alone or in the kitchen, but he recalls his stay with Nicolás as a happy period. After that, he is returned to his former mistress, and new misfortunes befall him. One episode makes him especially unhappy. His mistress steals the small legacy he receives from his recently deceased mother and tells him that the law makes her the automatic heir of her slaves. Manzano had hoped that she would give him his freedom as she had promised to do many times, and that he could spend

8  The order of sentences in the English translation is a bit different but the meaning is basically the same. 9  “Esta penitencia era tan frecuente que no pasaba semana sin que la sufriera dos o tres veces […]” (Manzano 2007, 88).

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the money inherited from his mother in his state of freedom. However, this episode makes him lose all hope: […] desde el momento en que perdí la halagüeña ilusión de mi esperanza no era ya un esclavo fiel: me convertí del más humilde en la criatura más despreciable. […] alas hubiera querido tener para desaparecer trasplantándome a la Habana, embotarónseme todos los sentimientos de gratitud: y sólo meditaba en mi fuga. (Manzano 2007, 110) ([…] from the moment I lost the illusion of my hoped-for freedom, I was no longer a faithful slave. I was transformed from a meek lamb into the most despicable creature. […]. I wished to possess wings so as to disappear, transported to Havana. All my feelings of gratitude were weakened, and I thought only about fleeing. (Manzano 1996, 119,121))

This is a turning point, a peripeteia, in the story. He is approximately twenty-nine years old. Until then, despite all the harsh punishments, he has remained loyal to his mistress; but, when he loses his hope for freedom, he also loses this loyalty. His status as a citizen worries him more than the physical abuse. This leads finally to his decision to escape. The macro-structure here is typical of slave narratives: A happy childhood (most often in Africa, but in Manzano’s case in the house of a white family) is followed by years of oppression and abuse, which leads to a final escape (Olney 1984, 50–51). However, as has been observed by several critics, the story is not told chronologically. It is full of lapses and omissions. Some omissions are due to the fact that Manzano tells his story many years later and has difficulty remembering details and the right order of things; other omissions are due to the fact that Manzano withholds information from the reader—for instance, about an especially brutal beating that he receives after having been falsely accused of stealing a capon. He is flogged and beaten for nine nights until it is finally revealed that the capon escaped and was eaten by a certain D.M.  Pipa. Commenting on the worst torture, Manzano says, “Let us draw a curtain over this scene” (Manzano 1996, 93) (“Corramos un velo sobre esta escena tan triste” (Manzano 2007, 94)). There are both involuntary and deliberate omissions and many vacillations; its narration is nonlinear, abrupt, and associative and it is written in colloquial Spanish with everyday expressions and prosodic rhythm (Molloy

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1991, 36).10 All in all, this challenges the sense of a normal narrative development and a secure, reliable narrator. Moreover, the ending is ambiguous. The text does not leave the reader with the image of heroic escape but with the image of Manzano getting the horse ready to escape but hesitant and horrified by the thought of repercussions (Manzano 2007, 115).11 Forensic Theatricality and Tragic Structure in the Autobiography Manzano’s Autobiography is a forensic text in more than one way: It demonstrates the brutality of enslavement from its beginning to its presumed ‘end.’ It includes vivid and visual descriptions of torture; its style of writing conveys a direct sense of the terror Manzano felt undergoing torture. Manzano carries the scars of violent torment on his own body. The evasive, palimpsestic, and achronological character of the text, its “errors and vacillations” (“errores y vacilaciones” (Friol 1977, 47)), add indexical veracity to the story and demonstrate the trauma of the author. However, Manzano does not only wish to illustrate the violence of slavery but also its systemic nature, its reliance on law, and its embeddedness in social and economic structures. The many misspellings and use of colloquial language may demonstrate not only trauma but also Manzano’s lack of education. The loss of his heritage demonstrates a lack of fundamental legal and economic rights. His mistress is correct when she says that, when a slave dies, all the slave’s ‘property’ belongs to his/her owner.12 He understands that the law is on the side of the system of slavery and that he will never be liberated. The tragedy of Manzano’s situation is heightened by idiosyncratic or sadistic personalities such as the Marchioness de Prado Ameno, but she represents a social order that allows her to indulge her whims and make life-and-­ death decisions like a sovereign ruler. The power of the masters is such that the voice of the oppressed can hardly be heard. This is exactly what Manzano demonstrates: White people cannot see Manzano as a co-citizen. 10  Roberto Friol highlights all these weaknesses of style but stresses the veracity of the text and the inviolable humanity of its writer (“humanidad inviolable”) (Luis 2007, 16). 11  As mentioned previously, the second volume of the autobiography has been lost. Readers may be aware that he did in fact escape to Havana. However, he was not liberated until 1836, the year after writing the autobiography. 12  Fernando Ortiz, quoted after Schulman (1996, 118, note 44).

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Therefore, they cannot hear what he is saying, but Manzano knows his own worth. In some passages, it may seem that Manzano has taken over the white people’s understanding. When he tells how he has stopped being a faithful slave and then adds that this “transformed [him] from a meek lamb into the most despicable creature” (Manzano 1996, 119) (my emphasis), it sounds as if he is critical of his own rebellious inclinations. Later he comes to the tragic conclusion that he is an inferior man: “I realize that no matter how much I try to speak the truth, I will never take my place as a perfect or even honorable man” (Manzano 1996, 89) (Sé que nunca por más que me esfuerce con la verdad en los labios, ocuparé el lugar de un hombre perfecto o de bien” (Manzano 1996, 88)). As Mar Gallego has argued, in this statement, Manzano seems to have internalized the whites’ derogatory opinion of him (Mar 2012, 55). However, if we read more closely, it becomes obvious that the contrary is the case. Manzano continues in this way: Pero a lo menos ante el juicio sensate del hombre imparcial, se verá hasta qué punto llega la preocupación del mayor número de los hombres contra el infeliz que ha incurrido en alguna flaqueza. (Manzano 1996, 88)13 But at least, in the eyes of the prudent judgment of impartial men, one will see to what extremes the prejudice of the majority touches the unfortunate being who has become the victim of some weakness. (Manzano 1996, 89)

The idea that he is a weak man or a “despicable creature” is not his own opinion but the “prejudice of the majority.” The majority will always see any vacillation or small weakness in the slave as signs of a deeper weakness. But Manzano does not see it that way and he invites the reader to assess his story as an impartial judge, to eschew prejudices, and not to let slave owners’ opinions on black people skew their point of view. If readers accept the invitation, they will also see Manzano as a talented person. Though he says in a letter to Del Monte (25 June 1835) that he is a “dead soul to his master” (Manzano 2007, 125), he demonstrates his vivacity, humanity, and gifted personality in his autobiography. The autobiography has a melancholic tone, but like the melancholy in Gertrudis 13  This passage does not exist in the version by William Luis. I quote from the edition by Ivan Schulman.

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Gómez de Avellaneda’s Sab (see Chap. 6), the melancholy in Manzano’s autobiography only rarely is a sign of resignation. It arises from the collision of depression, total devastation, psychological paralysis, and a temper of an intense liveliness, curiosity, and self-esteem. Critics often overlook the positive sides of Manzano’s self-depiction. One of the rare readings that has paid attention to these is by Adriana J. Bergero, who has pointed out that Manzano was a skillful tailor, painter, and doctor’s assistant (“auxiliar medico”) in Havana, an “emergent social agent” with money in his pocket (“actor social emergente”) (Bergero 2005, 9). His many talents were acknowledged by white people who asked specifically for his assistance and sometimes paid him for it. In some periods of his life, he was able to enjoy and benefit from the liberating atmosphere of urban life, and he is constantly curious and open to new possibilities in life. All through his life he strives to learn how to read and write, and to become a literary writer. Even in the house of the Marchioness de Prado Ameno, where he is whipped and exposed to social mockery for quoting poetry to children, he keeps learning poetry by heart and he is called pico de oro (the golden beak) (Manzano 2007, 88). When the Marchioness gives “strict orders for no one in the house to speak to [him],” Manzano talks out loud to himself, “affecting gestures and emotions according to the nature of the composition. It was said, therefore, that my facility for expression was such that just to talk, I would talk with the table, with the painting, with the wall” (Manzano 1996, 65).14 Though this expressive performativity is born out of a situation of complete and inhuman victimization, it also demonstrates Manzano’s natural proclivity toward potent literary creativity, even in the most impossible circumstances. The contrast between his energetic will to benefit from all aspects of life and the repetitive acts of cruel oppression creates a sense of constant tragedy. The natural right to life clashes with the system of oppression. At a certain point, he is accused of stealing a capon, a crime he did not commit but for which he is punished so severely that he barely survives. This is an example of radically unfair treatment that demonstrates inequality before the law since no white person would have been subjected to the same sort of violence on pure suspicion. But an event that is even more 14  “[…] hacienda gestos y visajes, según la naturaleza de los versos, decían que era tal mi flujo por hablar, que a trueque de hacerlo, hablaba con las mesas, con los curadros, con las paredes” (Manzano 2007, 90).

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devastating is the equally brutal punishment for picking up a leaf in the garden in order to smell its scent: Pues una tarde salimos al jardín: largo tiempo hacía que ayudaba a mi ama a coger flores, y a trasplantar algunas maticas come en gérero de diversón, mientras el jardinero andaba por todo lo ancho del jardín compliendo su deber, cuando el retirarnos, sin saber materialmente lo que hacía cogí una hojita, no más de geranio donato. Esta malva sumamente olorosa, iba en mi mano; mas ni yo sabia lo que llevaba distraído con mis versos: seguía a mi Señora a distancia de dos o tres pasos, tan ajeno de mí, que iba hacienda añicos la hoja, de lo que resultaba mayor fragancia. Al entrar en una antesala, no sé con qué motivo retrocedió, hícela paso; pero al enfrentar conmigo, llamóle la atención el olor: colérica de pronto con una voz vivísima y alterada me preguntó: “¿qué traes en las manos?” Yo me quedé muerto, el curerpo se me heló de improviso; y sin poder tenerme del temblor que me dio en ambas pernas, dejé caer en el suelo porción de pedacitos, que fueron un montón; una mata, ¡un atrevimiento de marca! (Manzano 2007, 93–94). (One afternoon we went out to the garden for quite a while. I was helping my mistress pick flowers or transplant little bushes as a kind of entertainment. […] As we were leaving, without knowing exactly what I was doing, I picked a leaf, nothing more than a small leaf from a geranium. Unaware of what I was doing, I held that extremely fragrant plant in my hand. Distracted by the verses consigned to my memory, I was walking two or three steps behind my mistress. Unconscious of what I was doing, I tore the leaf to threads, which produced an even stronger aroma. As she entered one of the anterooms, my mistress drew back, for what reason I do not know. I stepped aside, but upon coming face to face with me she noticed the fragrance. Suddenly angered, she asked me in a sharp, upset tone of voice: “What do you have in your hands?” My body immediately froze, barely able to stand up because both my legs were trembling, I dropped the handful of shredded leaves on the floor. She grabbed my hands, smelled them, and picked up the pieces, which became a pile, a bush, an outstanding audacity. (Manzano 1996, 89))

This passage demonstrates the essence of tragic composition: Within a few moments, an idyllic garden scene (with the soft scent of flowers and poetry) is dramatically changed into a scene of disaster and distress (an innocent pile of shredded leaves becomes “an outstanding audacity”). Note how he stresses that he tears the leaf in a moment of distraction,

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without thinking about it, seduced by the beautiful smell of the leaf. He follows his substantial drive towards beauty. Building on the analysis of classical tragedy, Christoph Menke claimed that the essence of tragic fate is “when it is through the very act by which an agent aims to preserve his or her good fortune that the sudden transformation of happiness into misery enters his or her life” (Menke 2009, 11). This is what happens here. Manzano aims to preserve a moment of happiness. For this ‘crime,’ he is dramatically punished and the happiness is turned into tragedy. He is, in his own words “tied up like Jesus” and beaten so badly that only six days later it is clear that he will survive (Manzano 1996, 90–91; 2007, 94–95). Since the leaves of one flower are hardly worth a fortune, it seems that it is Manzano’s enjoyment that provokes the punishment. His vivacity, which is applauded on other occasions, annoys his mistress. The harsh reaction of the Marchioness to such a trivial thing shows both the arbitrariness and the sovereignty of her power. She does not have to be fair. The system supports her. The mistress keeps the young man ‘hanging’ between hope and despair, between a privileged and favored position and a position as the vilest criminal, worth nothing more than a beast. The contrast between scenes of idyllic peace with scenes of torture creates a theatrical zigzag rhythm that in an acute way demonstrates the gap between the potential of Manzano’s character and the realities of enslavement. One could, therefore, argue that a forensic argument lies hidden in this tragic, structural juxtaposition of potentiality and reality. It demonstrates the devastating effects of a system of slavery and what could have been, had it not existed. Sometimes, in brief moments, a reversal of the power structure is glimpsed. It is shown that the mistress is dependent on her slave. The Marchioness continuously shifts between applause and punishment, between sending him to the sugar plantation and then bringing him back because she “could not be without [him] for more than ten days straight” (Manzano 1996, 123) (“no pudiese estar sin [él] muchos días seguidos” (Manzano 2007, 111)). Paradoxically, Manzano has some power over his mistress. Thus, the dynamic Hegelian dialectic between master and slave is ‘confirmed.’ A reversal of power is glimpsed as a possibility, but never more than a distant possibility, lurking behind the horizon. Manzano cannot change the slave system from within and he is not willing to make a violent rebellion. But he does explore how a weak position can be turned

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into strength, that is, how it can lead to the acknowledgment of an alternative moral and political order. Turning Weakness into Strength In the introduction to a bilingual edition of Manzano’s autobiography, Ivan Schulman contrasts Manzano’s text with the testament of the runaway slave Esteban Montejo, who gave his oral testimony about slavery to the ethnographer Miguel Barnet at a much later point in history—in the 1960s (Biografía de un cimarron) (Barnet 1966). According to Schulman, Manzano and Montejo are “two diametrically opposed personalities” (Schulman 1996, 9). Esteban Montejo is a brave man, “daring and enterprising”, while Manzano is timid, withdrawn, and fearful. According to Schulman, the advantage of Montejo’s position is that he does not identify with white culture. His success in escaping slavery, living as a maroon (cimarrón), and finally becoming a free man lends “a note of optimism and personal achievement to his memoirs” (Schulman 1996, 10); whereas Manzano’s will, according to Schulman, is “annihilated by his bondage”: Manzano “identifies with and even shows affection for his sadistic mistress” (Schulman 1996, 11). Schulman also quotes Cintio Vitier, who notes that Manzano is an “absolute victim” “not merely of slavery but of a concept fostered by the prevailing ‘white ideology’ of not valuing one’s African roots” (Schulman 1996, 12). As Schulman notes, Manzano is full of “shame” (Schulman 1996, 12). As quoted above, Mar Gallego also claims that Manzano has internalized the dominant racist code of values to the point at which he himself manifests a firm belief that he is so imperfect that he cannot be accepted as a respectable personage within society (Mar 2012, 55). The fact that Manzano describes a happy childhood in his mistress’ house and an affectionate bond with an extremely cruel mistress (Marchioness de Prado Ameno) has even led someone to ask whether bondage pleased him (Aching 2015, 81). In some readings, he is considered ‘unmanly’—in part, because of his personality and, in part, because he grew up in a highly feminized social environment. As such, the autobiography contradicts gender paradigms. As Fionnghuala Sweeney has argued, Manzano’s identity is created in “sharp distinction to that typically aspired to in Anglophone narratives” since he “is not concerned to establish manhood” but instead charts the course of a “personality consistently feminized, as well as inadequately

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defined in terms of its capacity for rational discursive engagement” (Sweeney 2004, 410). Manzano describes himself as having a “weak constitution” (Manzano 1996, 59) (“debilidad de mi naturaleza” (Manzano 2007, 88)), as being “extremely fearful” (Manzano 1996, 57), and “vulnerable” (ibid. 88); he cries when he hears music (ibid. 60) and is sometimes so unhappy that he has to seek consolation in the lap of his mother (ibid. 65), etc. According to Sweeney, Manzano’s descriptions of himself “bear close relation to those of gothic fiction, which sees the gradual dissolution and eventual collapse of the self” (Sweeney 2004, 409). Some of Manzano’s weakness is attributed to his personality, some of it to the specific circumstances of his life. Jerome Branche has explained Manzano’s hesitant voice through his dependency on Domingo del Monte. Though Del Monte, an important antislavery intellectual, not only invited Manzano to write the autobiography but also gave him a chance to appear as a poet in a literary circle at his mansion (an event that led to the collection of money that eventually bought Manzano’s freedom),15 Del Monte was also a firm believer in the value of whitening Cuba. He explicitly wanted to “clean Cuba of the African race” (“limpiar Cuba de la raza afrianca”) (Branche 2001, 72–73). According to Branche, racist ideology was also present when, in 1845, he “dismissed Manzano and Plácido as ‘dos poetas negros’” (Branche 2001, 84).16 It might have been difficult for Del Monte to position himself as a clear abolitionist since he lived on money earned from his family’s large sugar plantation in Cárdenas, Matanzas with more than one hundred slaves. His

15  The poem Manzano read aloud in Domingo del Monte’s palace in 1836, was “Treinte años.” It contained the following passage: “Treinta años ha que conocí la tierra:/Treinta años ha que en gemidor estado/Triste infortunio por doquier me asalta.//Mas nada es para mí la dura guerra/Que. en vano suspirar, he soportado/Si la calculo ¡oh Dios!, con la que falta.” (Manzano 2007, 138) (“Thirty years, I have known this earth:/Thirty years in which a mournful state/Of a sad fate attacks me everywhere// But this hard struggle under which I suffer/And sigh in vain, is nothing,/ if I compare it, Oh God! with the one that is to come” (my translation). This poem convinced intellectuals and writers to start the fundraising that, one year later, bought Manzano’s freedom (Luis 2007, 17). 16  “[T]he writings of both Saco and Del Monte repeatedly reveal a sense of paranoia over racial co-existence at the time, as well as the supremacist desire for a White and hence ‘civilized’ future Cuba” (Branche 2001, 72).

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brother-in-law, Domingo Aldama, was part of the immensely powerful white sugar aristocracy (“sacarocracía”) (Lienhard 2008, 117; Branche 2001, 75).17 Manzano was dependent on Del Monte and showed him his gratitude with what some have viewed as “excessive expressions” even to the point of infantilizing himself in his letters (Friol 1977, 58). The relationship with the powerful Del Monte must have put psychological pressure on Manzano with respect to his position as a writer. According to some critics, Manzano had to downplay the image of a rebellious slave in order to be accepted (Jackson 1979, 30–31). Add to this the fact that censorship was particularly harsh in this period (Aching 2015, 8) and that Manzano was reliant on Del Monte not to reveal his name and to protect him. Though he was living in Havana away from his mistress when he wrote the autobiography, Manzano was still a slave. He could not be certain that he was beyond harsh repercussions from her. Manzano’s vulnerable position is reflected in his writing (Schulman 1996, 11).18 Finally, his position as a mulatto and a domestic slave alienated Manzano from the black community. At several points in his Autobiography, he explains the horror of being sent to the sugar plantation El Molino not only because of the hard labor and harsh punishments that awaited him but because he would be cast in there as a “mulatto among blacks” (Manzano 1996, 133) (“mulato entre negros” (Manzano 2007, 115)). As we saw in the last chapter on Sab, a mulatto domestic slave does not necessarily have a natural alliance with black field slaves and may feel that he/ she does not belong anywhere. Manzano’s writing expresses also that: the lack of belonging or the lack of any stable identity or position. However, despite the ambiguous position of the writer, I contend that the criticism of Manzano’s weakness rests on a prejudice about what counts as resistance and ‘manly’ behavior. Contrary to what is often assumed, Manzano not only strives to master his new subjectivity but, in many ways, he may be said to succeed in establishing a way to articulate 17  Gerard Aching writes: “[T]he Alfonso-Aldama-Madan clan into which del Monte married took full advantage of the sugar boom during the first four decades of the nineteenth century and became one of the island’s wealthiest families. By 1860, this family’s third generation had diversified its economic ties and interests; not only did it own forty sugar plantations with no less than 15,000 slaves, but it also possessed ten titles of nobility and married into wealthy European families, including the Bourbon royal house in Spain” (Aching 2015, 37). 18  The excerpts of the Autobiography printed by R.R. Madden were published anonymously.

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his resistance. Before the autobiography, Manzano was already an accomplished poet, whose poems had been published in magazines such as Diario de La Habana and Diario de Matanzas. He had also published two collections of poems: Poesías líricas (Lyrical Poems, 1821) and Flores pasageras (Fleeting Flowers, 1830) (Domínguez 2021, 313–14). In the autobiography, he demonstrates considerable rhetorical skill, and his sensitivity, though it makes him vulnerable to punishments, is also the source of his strength. His resistance to slavery might not be a violent, rebellious kind; and, since he is a domestic slave, he has a totally different relationship with the white slave owners than Montejo has. However, that does not mean that his will is “annihilated” as Schulman claims. The assumption in Schulman’s claim is that a slave narrative must demonstrate a clear dissociation from white culture in order to display bravery and political agency.19 Readings that do not wish to see Manzano as “an absolute victim” and a weak person have found ways to argue that contrary to appearances he does in fact possess a strong agency as a person and as a writer. Ilia Casanova-Marengo has argued that Manzano’s omissions not only demonstrate trauma or weak memory but may be seen as a way of controlling the text: La supresión de información es la táctica con que niega la apropiación que sobre su subjetividad ha hecho Del Monte y el resto de los integrantes de su circulo literario. (Casanova-Marengo 2002, 43) (The suppression of information is the tactic by which he refuses the appropriation of his subjectivity, made by Del Monte and the rest of the members of his literary circle (my translation)).

Damián V. Solano Escolano has suggested that Manzano deliberately refrains from moral judgment and holds back information about the details of torture to reinforce the message. The idea is that silences enhance the effect of terror since they force the readers themselves to imagine the torture. In a controlled manner, through a play between text and silence, Manzano conveys a sense of terror that will spur the reader’s sympathy

19  Montejo is a special case since he lived as a maroon. The difficulty of dissociating oneself from the white dominant class is also visible in other slave narratives such as those by Olaudah Equiano and Frederick Douglass albeit in a different way than that in Manzano.

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and make the reader “complicit in his fight for survival” (Escolano 2021, 123).20 Susanne Draper has argued that, through his writing, Manzano creates a subjectivity that overturns the Hegelian master–slave dichotomy. In the Hegelian dichotomy, there is a constitutional opposition between reason (the master) and body (the slave). From the very beginning of his autobiography, however, Manzano establishes a rational discourse of superiority (Draper 2002, 6). The fact that he does not (want to) write an ordinary slave narrative or a text that fits literary criteria or a national discourse demonstrates an act of resistance in itself (Draper 2002, 11). In a critical discussion with (among others) Susanne Draper, Gerard Aching has argued for an “unconscious resistance as a psychological resource” (Aching 2015, 66). He argues that Manzano internalized the master–slave dichotomy and that the autobiography demonstrates Manzano’s “struggle for self-mastery” (Aching 2015, 14). In all these readings, whether they argue for an explicit or an implied form of resistance, resistance is connected directly to the agency of the person Manzano: both the protagonist of the story and the writer. The question underlying the discussions is basically: To what extent does he succeed in establishing a sovereign subject position in the face of overwhelming oppression? To what extent does he demonstrate that he has not absorbed the derogatory opinion of whites and that he is in control of the rhetorical discourse? This focus on the person—the narrator and the writer, Manzano—is also important for my reading. However, I wish to shift the focus slightly away from him to the question of the tragic mode. Manzano is certainly the controlling narrator but he uses the tragic mode strategically to carve out a subject position that is not identical with a liberal ideal of individual autonomy and agency. Human rights are thereby connected with social equality rather than individual autonomy. In contrast with the image of heroic bravery or personal agency, it is interesting that Manzano often compares himself with Jesus. This happens in the central leaf-smelling episode quoted earlier, where he says that he 20  “Manzano, lejos de querer moralizar a su público, lo quiere involucrar en una modalidad afectiva de terror que llama a la complicidad en su lucha por la supervivencia” (Escolano 2021, 123). And: “la hipótesis que propongo es que el conductor emocional de esta colaboración es el terror, que nos lleva a empatizar con el narrador y sentir su dolor en niveles de intensidad controlados” (Escolano 2021, 114).

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was tied up like Jesus. Like Manzano, Jesus was accused of a crime of which he was innocent and was unjustly punished. Jesus was also a victim, reduced to helplessness, but he embraced this vulnerable position, avoided to accuse his pursuers and by doing so he conveyed a powerful message of inner strength and higher justice (a substantial principle). In his own way, Manzano does something similar. Manzano undermines a normative form of heroism, and he avoids the Manichean abolitionist setup. Contrary to Richard Robert Madden’s abolitionist rhetoric in the poems, which were attached to the first translation of Manzano’s Autobiography, Manzano does not depict white masters as only greedy and evil and slaves as only suffering victims. His rhetorical position is complicated and sometimes subtle, yet no less vigorously antislavery. In order to explore the positive functions of vulnerability in Manzano’s work, I shall examine his drama Zafira and after that return to a comparison between vulnerability in the autobiography and in Zafira.

Zafira: A Tragedy About Slavery Zafira: Tragedia en cinco actos (Zafira: A tragedy in Five Acts) (1842),21 which has not yet been translated into English, is a much lesser known work by Manzano than the Autobiography. It was written after Manzano became a free man in the late 1830s. We do not know whether it was ever performed on stage, but it was printed (surprisingly) in 1842 with the support of 300 subscribers (Miller 2019, 97). Zafira was based on a previous, anonymous Spanish drama, printed in 1800 with the same title; but, as Marilyn Miller writes, “[U]nlike its Spanish precursor, Manzano’s play is a true tragedy, for all the major characters experience some overwhelming form of death, loss, or despair, even amidst seeming victory” (Miller 2008, 61). Margaret Olsen argues that one of the most interesting things is the way “in which a drama of Spanish imperialism is turned into a play of emerging nationhood” (Olsen 2007, 144–45). According to Olsen, it is genuinely Caribbean and contains allusions to the Cuban poet José-María de Heredia (1803–1839) and the Venezuelan liberator Simón Bolivar (1783–1830). Though later deemed a minor literary work, Zafira was considered at the time to be a masterpiece, and by some critics Manzano was thought to 21  All references to Zafira are to this edition: Zafira, Barcelona, 2009. All translations are mine.

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be a great writer, associated with the liberal, anti-colonial elite (“the bard that Cubans will applaud and enjoy” (“el bardo que el cubano suele/ Aplaude y goza”) (Miller 2019, 99) (my translation). As suggested by Roberto Friol, some of the curiosity about his play may have been more social than literary, centered on how a mulatto slave could write a literary work of art, a fact that seemed to contemporary audiences to be almost a miracle (Miller 2019, 97–98). However, the play is not without merit. It has a remarkable complexity; and, despite the fierce censorship, it succeeded in promoting an antislavery agenda. Based loosely on actual historical events in the sixteenth century, Zafira depicts the conflict between the Turkish Admiral Barbarroja (originally, Barbarossa) and the local King Entemi Selim of Mauritania (originally, Suleyman I). Despite its African setting, the play may be read as an allegory of Cuba’s colonial situation. The Spanish colonial masters are represented by Barbarroja and his army, and the Cubans are allegorically represented by the local Arabs, who are unjustly ‘colonized’ by a foreign power (Olsen 2007, 138; Miller 2008, 52). In the play, Entemi Selim is described as the legitimate and noble Arabian ruler of the Kingdom of Mauritania. Ten years before the beginning of the play, he has been killed by Barbarroja, who is depicted as an honorable, yet brutal Turkish pirate and usurper, who succeeds in subduing seven local communities and taking the throne of Mauritania. At the beginning of the play, he tries to kill the last (psychological) resistance to his rule by forcing Selim’s widow, Zafira, to marry him. In the first act, we meet Zafira in a moment of sorrow and confusion. She is still mourning her late husband, and she is in despair about a destiny that has condemned her to “eternal sorrow” (“eterno llanto”) (Manzano 2009, 12). When her friend Colifa reminds her that she is to marry the new ruler, Barbarroja, she reacts with confusion (“Tiene por fallo/mi total confusion” (Manzano 2009, 13). Her son, who is also called Selim, has been in exile since his father’s death, and he is believed to be dead as well. In Act I, he returns with the clear intent of avenging the murder of his father and taking back the throne. Because of the tense political situation, he arrives in the disguise of an Arabian slave. As in classical tragedy, the moment of recognition between mother and son is important. It takes up a lot of space and time in the drama. The suspicion that a stranger who has just arrived, dressed as an Arabian slave, is actually Selim is already mentioned in Act I. However, it takes all of Act II and the beginning of Act III before mother and son finally recognize

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and embrace each other. It takes so long because Selim needs secrecy to take his revenge. Zafira guesses that it is him but does not dare to believe it, etc. The recognition theme serves to build up emotional engagement and create suspense, but it also fosters wonder in the spectator about the transformation of a ‘slave’ into a prince. The relatively slow dramatic buildup also allows for a scene that, at first, seems marginal. It is a scene in which Barbarroja’s brother Isaac comes to announce his brother’s victory but also to proclaim his love for Zafira and to offer her the opportunity to run away with him, an offer she declines. The introduction of Isaac, who sees himself as peaceful in contrast to his warrior brother Barbarroja, adds nuance to the understanding of the enemy. I shall return to the role of Isaac, the Turkish warrior with a Jewish name. Though Zafira refuses to run away here, she later suggests this idea to Selim, but he rejects it. He has come to avenge his father; and, as he says, he is no “coward” (“cobarde”) (Manzano 2009, 59). We do not see Barbarroja in person until the end of Act III, when he finally arrives amid victorious jubilation. He expects that Zafira will be happy to marry him since he has won the war, but she turns away from him as he enters. She rejects his offer of marriage by saying that she is “tied to the grave,” that is, to her late husband. Surprisingly, when he realizes that she is bent on dying, he offers to die with her. He says he is consumed by an enormous passion for her. His offer may not be real because, immediately afterwards, he says that she cannot reject him and that he will force her to marry him. When she continues to reject him, she is taken prisoner along with the faithful general Dalí. Act IV basically consists of a prison scene: Zafira and the old general Dali are incarcerated. Since they are not willing to accept any compromises offered by Barbarroja, they are condemned to death. In Act IV, scene 7, Zafira and Dali are just about to be killed when Selim, some Arab aristocrats, and the slave Noemí blow up the wall of the prison and, in a dramatic scene, liberate Zafira and Dali. It all seems to be heading toward a happy ending until everything is turned upside down in Act V in which we witness the peripeteia and tragic resolution. In this act, we learn that Selim has defeated Barbarroja in battle, but following an old code of honor, Selim insists that he needs to duel him, man to man. His mother opposes this. Zafira does not see the duel, but it is related by Colifa that it seems that Selim has lost and is dead. This false information has fatal consequences. Overwhelmed by sorrow, Zafira commits suicide. When Selim returns as a winner with Noemí, who carries the blood-dripping head of

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Barbarroja, he discovers that his mother is dead. Selim is shocked by this fatal event. He declares that he has now “become a man,” but he also surprisingly renounces the crown since he does not want to sit on a blood-­ stained throne (“un trono ensangrentado”) (Manzano 2009, 113). This refusal by the legitimate heir and victorious warrior and duelist to seize power is the final scene of the tragedy. Thus, the drama does not only end with the death of the protagonist, who is mourned by her son, but with an enigmatic scene depicting the son’s simultaneous maturity (manhood) and self-chosen powerlessness. How is the ending to be interpreted? Is it a sign that Manzano favors ‘weakness’ over manly heroism? Refusing to take the throne renders the fight against Barbarroja almost pointless. The question is what moral may be deduced from this tragic ending and how it relates to slavery. Civilization Versus Barbarism: The Moral Message of the Tragedy of Zafira One of the radical aspects of the play Zafira is the appearance on stage of the African slave Noemí, who plays a heroic role. At the time, white audiences were known to whistle in a derogatory way whenever a black person appeared on stage. Therefore, to depict a black slave as a hero was quite radical (Friol 1977, 68–69; Olsen 2007, 15). As mentioned above, it has been suggested that Manzano’s alter ego within the play is Noemí, the eunuch slave (Friol 1977, 82). Noemí is almost the first person to recognize Selim when he comes back to the country after 10 years of exile. He helps Selim escape when he is about to be caught by Barbarroja’s men; and, finally, in a truly heroic act, he helps to free Zafira and the faithful general Dali after they have been imprisoned by Barbarossa behind thick walls. Selim and Noemí simply blow up the walls to the prison; and, as Selim leads Zafira and Dali away, Noemí heroically fends off Barbarroja and his men. Noemí is a slave and a eunuch, but he is proud and strong. When Selim asks him whether he is a slave, he responds that he is superior to all in destiny: Selim: ¿No eres esclavo? Noemí: Soy superior en todo a la fortuna, Mas tesoro no quiero, yo la canto Según la encuentro, próspera, o adversa

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Y así de sus caprichos nada extraño Selim: Hombre feliz ¿quién eres? Noemí: Yo… un árabe A quien negó la suerte vuestro rango. Pero no una alma ardiente y compasiva (Manzano 2009, 28). (Selim: Are you not a slave? Noemí: I am superior to all in Fortune. I do not wish for other gifts. I sing Fortune’s tribute, Whatever she turns out to be, prosperous or the opposite. There is nothing strange about her caprices. Selim: Happy man, who are you? Noemí: Me … an Arab Who was denied a destiny of your kind But not a passionate and compassionate spirit).

Despite his social position, Noemí appears to be a sovereign being who does not value earthly belongings. He is a stoic, morally superior man with a true heart. His job is to keep vigil, day and night, at the old King’s grave. He is the witness of Zafira’s sorrow and the agent of her escape. Finally, and importantly in terms of symbolism, it is Noemí who carries the head of Barbarroja when Selim returns victorious from the duel to bring the good news to his mother. A black slave carrying the decapitated head of Barbarroja, who allegorically represents the white colonial rule of Spain, is a strong image of resistance. As Margaret Olson reminds us, this scene in the play carries strong allusions to the revolution in Haiti, but the scene may also be read as a reversal of the execution of the historical slave rebel José Antonio Aponte, who was killed in 1812 in Havana and whose head was exhibited in a cage at the entrance to Havana “in order to provoke terror in potential rebels” (Olsen 2007, 154). Noemí parades the head of Barbarroja as a vengeful mirror image of that historical event. Though Noemí only plays a minor role, he may, as Friol suggested, be seen as a true hero of the story. There is a bond of recognition and friendship between him and Selim. When Selim meets Noemí, Selim, who is dressed as a slave himself, immediately recognizes him as a friend and embraces him. There is a tight emotional and agential relation between Selim, the rightful heir to the throne of Mauritania, and Noemí, the slave. In addition, Noemí incarnates the morality of the play by opposing material wealth and greediness with stoic heroism, faithfulness, and compassion. A contrasting figure to Noemí within the play is Damney, a lieutenant

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in Barbarroja’s army, who is obsessed with power and riches. Officially, Damney supports Barbarroja; but, behind the scene, he tries to get both Selim and Barbarroja killed so that he can seize the throne himself. Though minor, Noemí is an essential character, who may easily be seen as a heroic alter ego of Manzano. Margaret Olsen has also suggested that Manzano wishes to see himself in the role of Selim, who arrives, disguised as a slave, but who is the legitimate heir to power and a “free citizen” who will “provide intellectual leadership in a sovereign government” (Olsen 2007, 154). While I agree that these are convincing suggestions, I argue that both neglect the main conflict in the drama. Though the play literally dramatizes the conflict between Barbarroja and Selim, the most important conflict is not between these two warriors, who share many values and agree about the conditions of an honorable duel, but between Zafira and Selim, who disagree about the right way to defeat the enemy. The conflict between Zafira and Selim may easily be overlooked if the focus is on the physical battle or the explicit political conflict in the play. However, the conflict between Zafira and Selim is more important since it is about the justification of political power, the moral means to secure power, the conditions for the political transformation of society, and (in short) the opposition between civilization and barbarism. I argue that Manzano’s alter ego within the drama is not Noemí or Selim but Zafira, who is the eponymous protagonist of the drama. This may have been overlooked because of the gender difference between Zafira and Manzano; but, as we have understood from the autobiography, Manzano was closely associated all his life with the feminine sphere and might not see himself as alienated from a female protagonist. Selim is a Hamlet-like character who insists on physical revenge even though he understands that revenge is an old-fashioned classical virtue related to bygone heroic times (Cantor 2004, 37). Zafira, on the other hand, is modern in her understanding of gender roles and in her understanding of how to build a modern civilization. She is locked inside an old regime based on honor, but she tries to break loose. If one construes the protagonist Zafira as representing the situation of the slave, one cannot help noticing how many prison metaphors she uses to describe her situation. At one point in the drama when she is imprisoned in a tower, she exclaims:

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He aquí la prisión: he allí un suplicio. Y heme también a mí. Del Sol los rayos Aún no doran la faz del horizonte. Todo en tiniebla gime sepultado/Como mi corazón… (Manzano 2009, 77) (Here is the prison, here is torture. Here am I. The rays of the sun still don’t enlighten the horizon. All in darkness moan, buried Like my heart…).

She speaks as if there were a natural connection between prison, torture, and herself. She laments the sepulchral darkness of the prison, which is like the darkness of her heart. In the very first scene of the play, she describes how she is imprisoned and how her ability to act has been thwarted due to circumstances that oppress her, and that this inability has been internalized. Like a perverted version of King Midas, she feels that everything she touches with her treacherous hand (“la engañosa mano” (Manzano 2009, 11)) turns into a nightmare. The nightmare seems to originate in herself. However, the terrifying ghost of her late husband, which appears in her nightmares to accuse her of faithlessness, seems quite real. Though he has been dead ten years, the old Entemi Selim appears as a relatively corporeal cadaver, covered with dust, sepulchral traces, and streaks of blood still running down his face. This dreadful ghost of a beloved husband embarks on a long speech that accuses Zafira of “a criminal love” (“amor criminal” (Manzano 2009, 14)). He threatens her and explains what is going to happen to her if she marries Barbarroja. Then, the ground below her opens up and she falls into an abyss, landing before a subterranean tribunal of corpses, who condemn her love to eternal shame: Y ante un terrible tribunal de muertos Arrastrada me hallé … y era un osario Donde rodeada fui de acusadores, Que como un crimen de mi amor juzgando, Al eterno oprobio condenarme osaban. Alí aterrada mi inocencia en vano Pretendí defender … todos me acusan. Y al fin ahogada en sus infectos brazos Iba a exhalar el ultimo suspiro, Cuando del lecho confundida salto. (Manzano 2009, 15)

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(And I found myself dragged before a terrible court of corpses … and it was an ossuary where I was surrounded by prosecutors who judged my love as a crime and dared to condemn me to eternal shame. Having been struck down there (“aterrada”), I tried in vain to defend my innocence… . All accused me and, in the end as I was drowning in their infected arms and I was about to draw my last breath, I leapt confused from the bed).

This nightmarish plunge into the abyss and attack by corpse-like prosecutors may, of course, be interpreted as a symbolic incarnation of a bad conscience. Zafira knows that loving Barbarroja or any other man would dishonor her virtue as a woman. At this point, she does not know that it was Barbarroja who killed her husband, so it is only her female honor that is in peril. However, the nightmarish scenario of unfair accusation and a near-­ death experience is like what Manzano himself experienced when he was falsely accused of stealing a capon or unfairly punished for smelling the leaves of a flower. The scene is a vivid exposition of an unjust court that condemns Zafira to punishment without evidence just as Manzano had been chastised many times. And, similarly, she seems to be condemned for her wish to live and love. But why does the ghost appear at all? It adds a Shakespearean atmosphere to the play,22 and it is part of the forensic discourse on the murder of the King. The ghost appears with the signs of the deadly violence committed against him, literally displaying the evidence of the crime. The ghost also uses his wounds to persuade Zafira of her obligation to him, an obligation she feels she has but wishes she did not. Though she is innocent of having been unfaithful, she is perhaps not innocent of having wished to be so. She herself speaks of her “criminal love,” and it is implied when, in conversation with her friend Colifa, she dares to question the death sentence that Heaven has pronounced on her: 22  It would be fruitful to do a comparison between Hamlet and Zafira. Both of the dramas contrast classical heroism with modern realism, but they are also very different. In contrast with Hamlet, Zafira has a more realistic foundation: the ghost is more corporeal, and the references to real political problems are much more obvious. Moreover, Zafira has a more democratic foundation.

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Busca en la sombra del sepulcro helado Una asilo feliz, la vision dijo. ¿Y qué puedo esperar? ¿No es éste el fallo Con que termina el cielo mis querellas? (Manzano 2009, 16). (Seek and find in the shadow of the icy grave a happy asylum, the apparition said. and what else could I expect? Is this not the verdict with which heaven ends my troubles?).

Zafira wishes that she could engage in a bodily and life-affirming love— even, perhaps, with Barbarroja, who is depicted as honorable up to a certain point, or with his kinder brother Isaac, who wishes to flee with her (Manzano 2009, 60), but she is condemned to eternal sorrow and death. She is constantly melancholic. She laments and weeps over her destiny, which seems to be “dolores sin fin” (sorrows without end), as she cries out in the first scene in which she appears in her black robe of mourning. Zafira’s sense of being imprisoned, unable to act, and condemned to eternal sorrow or even death is a feeling parallel to being enslaved, according to Manzano’s letter to Del Monte (Manzano 2007, 125).23 However, Zafira says she is condemned not only by heaven but by a court of ghastly corpses that drag her underground. This indicates that the verdict is not an honorable and fair one but rather a perverted version of fortune. The demand of loyalty to a husband who has been dead for ten years appears not so much as a tragic destiny but more as a dreadful and unfair duty. However, like Manzano, Zafira is not only a suffering victim. Officially, she follows social codes determined by an old, paternalistic culture. But she incarnates ideals of a modern world. This comes out in the dialogue with her son Selim in the last act. In this last act, Barbarroja has understood that he is going to lose the battle against Selim. Men who previously supported him are now fleeing. He has barely twenty men who support him. In the first, remarkable scene of Act V, he calls his political and military ambition a criminal passion (“passion criminal”), the very same term used to describe Zafira’s potential love for other men, but here the term is used with more justification.

23  “[…] soy esclavo; y […] el esclavo es un ser muerto ante su señor […], Letter to Domingo del Monte, Havana, 25 June 1835 (Manzano 2007, 125).

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Selim has won the battle. In V.3, Barbarroja surrenders and leaves his life in the hands of Selim (Manzano 2009, 99). Against the advice of an old friend, General Dali, and despite Barbarroja’s pleadings with Selim, Selim insists on a duel with Barbarroja. A dialogue ensues between Zafira and Selim. Zafira tries to persuade Selim not to duel with Barbarroja, who is much stronger and more experienced than Selim. In V.7, Selim repeats his desire to avenge his father. But Zafira intervenes: Oye Selim: en nombre y por los manes De tu padre, y mis lágrimas te ruego Y aún rogamos las dos, que ese combate Se permute en la acción de tus derechos. Barbarroja, homicida ya ha probado Era más digno sin duda del severo Castigo que las leyes prefijaron Para ejercer su imperio en tales reos. Obrad pues como Rey, usando de ellas Y aleja de ese honor caballeresco El voraz fanatismo y entusiasmo Que en los nobles cristianos puso el sello De inauditas desgracias: un malvado En herir corazones, alto diestro Puede al más poderoso y justo hombre Con mano indigna atravesar el pecho. (Manzano 2009, 103–04) (Listen, Selim: in the name and spirit Of your father, with my tears, I beg you. Yes, we both beg you that this battle Transforms itself into a fight for your rights. Barbarroja has already been proven to be a murderer. He is certainly worthy of the severe Punishment that the laws have prefixed For using his power to commit these crimes. Act then as King, use the laws And remove from the knightly honor The destructive fanaticism and passion That marked the noble Christians with So many horrible disasters: an evil man Who is highly apt at wounding hearts Can with a sly hand penetrate the breast Even of a powerful and just man.)

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And she repeats: “la ley te favorece./Tu dignidad de colma de derechos” (Manzano 2009, 104) (“the law favors you./Your title is derived fully by rights”). In this legalistic and prudential discourse, Zafira turns out to be a modern pragmatic, who believes in the rationality of human beings and a modern society founded in law. Although the law that gives Selim the throne is an old hereditary law, her arguments rest on a modern appeal to reason and a defense of the physically weaker but wiser man. Being stronger in a physical or military sense does not mean that you have the right to seize the throne. However, Selim will not listen. He says he is not free to choose. Once again, old honor codes seem to imprison the male hero. After the duel, he prides himself on having been able to run his sword thrice into Barbarroja’s body to prove his father’s right to the throne, his mother’s honor, and the people’s interests: “[…] padre, trono,/Madre, honor y pueblo a un tiempo/Satisfacción legítima reciben” (Manzano 2009, 112) (“[…] father, throne/ Mother, honor and people at the same time/Will receive legitimate revenge.”) At this point in the tragedy, it seems that Selim’s right to the throne goes hand in hand with the right to revenge. But when Selim discovers that Zafira has committed suicide because she believed her son to be dead, Selim exclaims: Dejadme lamentar, que al fin soy hombre. Y a los sensibles seres pertenezco. […] […] ya no quiero un trono ensangrentado Con las preciosas vidas de mis deudos. (Manzano 2009, 113) (Let me mourn, for at last I am a man. And I belong to the sensible human beings […] […] now I don’t want a throne, stained with the blood Of my family’s precious lives.)

At the last moment, it turns out that the price of revenge was too high, that the losses stained the victory irreparably. Selim leaves the throne to the people of Mauritania. The ending is politically open: We do not know what the people might do with the throne, but one interpretation is, of course, that the ending points toward democracy. Selim himself laments his destiny, but the interesting thing is that he connects sorrow and

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sensibility to manliness. It is not the victory over Barbarroja that makes him a man but his mourning of his dead mother. It is exactly his emotional vulnerability that seems to be the essence of manliness. It is a sign of manliness not to take the throne but leave the power to the people. This surprising end of the drama points to the strength of what seems to be weakness. The drama rejects classical heroism and knightly honor and points instead toward a civilized, democratic society based on modern pragmatism, rationality, and law. In such a modern society, good citizens are not honor-bound. They are ‘sensible beings’ who are sensitive to the importance of love and conscious of their responsibility to secure the stability of the state. What is also remarkable is that the tragedy undermines a Manichean morality, the dichotomy between friend and enemy. As already hinted, Barbarroja is not an entirely bad person. When he is courting Zafira, he claims that she has already given him a yes. When she refuses to marry him, he is first surprised; then, he is full of despair and tries to put pressure on her; he says he wants to die with her. Finally, he laments the loss of her love: ¡Oh, qué feliz yo! viviera amando ¡Su belleza gentil, y de este modo Cuan virtuoso fuera, cuan humano. (Manzano 2009, 79) (Oh, how happy I would be if I could live loving Her gentle beauty, and living in this way How virtuous I would be, how human!)

Barbarroja sees Zafira as a humanizing force, one that is necessary for a King. This seems like a positive message, though it is also possible that Barbarroja only sees her as a just reward for the hard trials of war. However, if Barbarroja is not an ideal and loving person, his brother, Isaac, might be exactly that. As mentioned previously, Isaac is also in love with Zafira, and he sees himself as a moral contrast to Barbarroja. As he explains to Zafira, nature made Barbarroja strict (“severo”) and himself sensible (“sensible”) (Manzano 2009, 21). Isaac prides himself on the fact that during the war, he has acted deliberately to avoid killing anybody. He is a man of peace; and, just like Manzano, he associates inner strength and beauty with an apparent vulnerability. The reason he is in love with Zafira is not because

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of her wealth and physical beauty but because her sufferings have made her into a sublime being: Ni un prestigio de amor, ni los encantos Que en tu belleza los mortales aman, Jamás, jamás en tu favor me hablaron, El infortunio, sí, te hace a mi vista Más que una Hurí de los elíseos campos Sublime, interesante y siempre digna De las miradas del mayor humano. Soy un turco, es verdad, mas no insensible. (Manzano 2009, 20) (Neither love’s prestige, nor the charm of Your beauty that mortals love, Has ever, ever served as a praise of you in my eyes, But unhappiness did; it made you in my view More sublime and interesting Than a Huri from the Elysian fields And always worthy of the look of the best human being. I am a Turk, that is true, but I am not insensible.)

The inherent argument here is that suffering creates human sensibility and dignified beauty. Suffering is not only negative but part of the Bildung of the citizen. Even though Isaac is the enemy, he is depicted as a sensible human being. As Zafira later says to Selim, not all Turks are bad people. Some are even virtuous (Manzano 2009, 60) and understand that suffering people like women (and slaves) possess a humane and civilizing force.

Conflicts and Forensic Theatricality in Manzano’s Tragic Works In the Aristotelean understanding of tragedy, the genre involves suffering, but the suffering cannot be accidental and it cannot be the suffering of bad or primitive people. If it is, no one will feel pity for the person who suffers. In addition, the tragic outcome of the events must be the consequence of the hero’s own greatness. Mark William Roche defines tragedy in this way: Tragedy is an action in which the hero’s greatness leads inexorably to suffering. Tragedy contrasts what is substantial and great with the negative

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c­ onsequences of this greatness. By substantial I mean that which is aligned with virtue, both primary virtues such as goodness and justice and secondary or formal virtues such as courage, loyalty, or discipline. The substantial requires that the self abandon limited desires and interests for the sake of what transcends the self, the universal. (Roche 1997, 49)

Selim and Zafira are tragic protagonists who incarnate substantial virtues—respectively, the virtue of classical heroism and the virtues of faithfulness and justice. Both of them suffer because of their virtues: Zafira is condemned to suffer because of her faithfulness to a long-dead husband and because of her motherly feelings for her son. Selim is condemned to suffer because of his faithfulness to a heroic code of honor. However, suffering is not enough to create tragedy. As Hegel reminded us in Aesthetic Lectures on Fine Art, a drama is only a true tragedy if it depicts a substantial conflict, that is, a conflict in which the conflicting parties are equally justified: The original essence of tragedy consists then in the fact that within such a conflict each of the opposed sides, if taken by itself, has justification; while each can establish the true and positive content of its own aim and character only by denying and infringing the equally justified power of the other. The consequence is that in its moral life, and because of it, each is nevertheless involved in guilt. (Hegel 1998, 220)

Zafira and Selim feel equally justified in their views on war and government. Neither of them can change their view. As Hegel also says, tragic characters are “what they are” since they incarnate a substantial principle. Only if they incarnate such a principle can a conflict of interest be played out on stage. However, in the end, the protagonist must also acknowledge his one-sidedness. He/she must understand that the other principle was equally or even more justified. In Sophocles’ Antigone, Kreon understands that he should have bent his understanding of public order to allow for a family burial of Polyneikes. Both Antigone and Kreon are guilty of their tragic endings but they are guilty in an innocent way since they could not have chosen alternative ways to behave. Antigone could not choose to not bury Polyneikes; Kreon could not choose to not follow the rules for burials of traitors and he could not foresee that following the rules would lead to disaster and even the death of someone very close to him.

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One of the reasons Selim is unable to take the throne after his mother has committed suicide is that he feels guilty for her death. He ignored her advice about a peaceful ascendance to the throne; he insisted on the duel with Barbarroja, which led indirectly to her death. Because he acknowledges this, he cannot take the throne. Yet, his code dictates that he could not have chosen otherwise. Thus, the guilt is not personal, not an individualized guilt. Seen from Selim’s own point of view, he was justified in pursuing revenge. However, his principle of revenge is demonstrated to be wrong. Reading Zafira through Hegel’s theory invites us to see that the essential conflict is between Zafira and Selim. Only here is there an opposition between substantial principles. This is significant if we read the drama as an allegory on slavery or resistance to slavery and see it as an exploration of the proper basis of a just society. The conflict is between classical heroism (revenge) and the modern rule of law (reason), and the latter principle seems to win. The title of the drama is not Selim but Zafira. It is not Selim’s ideals but Zafira’s that survive especially since, at the end, Selim seems to acknowledge her ideals. As a protagonist, Zafira incarnates some of the virtues that Manzano also values: sensibility, wisdom on the basis of suffering, pragmatic morality, belief in the rule of law and rationality of human beings, and a non-Manichean universe. If Zafira is read in this way, it seems to advocate pacifism. Far from celebrating the duel with Barbarroja, the drama celebrates a legal constitution that secures a fair judgment over criminal usurpers and murderers. To choose reason and the rule of law instead of honor and revenge may be seen as weakness. But from another point of view, it is more radical than honor and revenge because it demands a total reversal of the hierarchical structure of society. It is true that the image of the slave Noemi who enters at the end of the drama with the bloody head of Barbarroja is a strong image of the rightful revenge of the weaker on the stronger. If the drama is understood as an allegory of the wider colonial situation in Cuba, Noemí, representing Cuba, has beheaded Spain, represented by Barbarroja. This seems like a strong image of Cuban independence, obtained through violence. But the play’s ending invites the people of Mauritania, that is, Cuba, to take rule into their own hands in a democratic way:

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Hijos de Mauritania … a Dios … ya brilla De vuestra libertad del lauro eterno. Yo mi pena libré y vuestra ventura A un tiempo mismo … a esa madre os dejo. Llenad vuestros deberes como amigos. (Manzano 2009, 113) (Children of Mauritania … to God …already The eternal triumph [lauro] of your freedom is shining. At the same time, I freed myself of pain And set your future free … to this mother, I leave you. Fulfill your duties as friends.)

In the absence of a ruler, the final words are an invitation to the people to unite and become free political subjects. Though this invitation is vague, the implications are potentially radical. The drama ends by celebrating the freedom of the oppressed people, who must now act “as friends,” that is, they are socially equal. Since the people of Mauritania are black people oppressed by a colonial enemy, the freedom that is mentioned at the end may be understood as both the freedom of Cuba from Spanish rule and the freedom of slaves from dominion. There is, thus, a double message of liberation in the drama. The question is: How does this relate to Manzano’s autobiography? Manzano’s autobiography is a testament to his own, individual suffering. One could even argue that his style of writing is highly personalized and creates a sense of authenticity and intimacy. As readers, we feel the intense sorrow of the young boy who is exposed to the sadistic behavior of his mistress and we hope for his liberation as he saddles his horse to escape at the end. Yet, if we read the autobiography as a tragedy and read it through the ‘message’ of the drama Zafira, it becomes clearer that there are striking similarities and that the message is not one of heroic escape but of a more radical transformation of society. There are, of course, many obvious formal differences. Still, in his autobiography, like in the drama, Manzano is attempting to demonstrate how the weak person is right and the powerful wrong. Like Zafira, the narrator in the autobiography is both psychologically and socially vulnerable. Like Zafira, his psychological vulnerability is connected with his capacity for love and poetry, and his social vulnerability is connected with his wish to deny a Manichaean moral universe. Zafira understands that not all Turks are evil, just as Manzano understands that not all whites are evil. In the

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same way that Zafira points to the need for revising old normative systems, Manzano advocates a revision of the colonial system. Like Barbarroja, who loves Zafira and is dependent on her redemptive humanism, the Marchioness Prado de Ameno is shown to be dependent on her loveable and talented slave. When Zafira rejects him, Barbarroja condemns her to death; when Manzano becomes too independent and shines too much in the household, the Marchioness punishes him harshly, so harshly that he almost dies. The prison-like oppression of Zafira within an outdated moral system speaks directly to the imprisonment of the enslaved people within a restrictive system in Cuba. Following Kate Brown, one can say that Manzano is vulnerable in a number of ways: personally, socially, situationally, and as a human being, but his text demonstrates that vulnerability can be (turned into) a good thing. In his case, it is connected to poetic sensibility, and it is related to the capacity to understand social dependency and the need for a society that protects the ‘weak.’ His specific poetic sensibility helps him to avoid a demonization of white people while criticizing the general system of slavery and to envision a future regime in which it is not brute force, like Barbarroja’s, but wise pragmatism, like Zafira’s, that will rule the world. Manzano might not be a strong heroic figure; but, in his apparent “weakness,” he delivers a much deeper criticism of the system of slavery, and he blazes the way for an understanding of human rights that is not strictly related to individuality. As a domestic slave in a household in which the mistress tried to usurp the place of his own mother and integrate Manzano into the family as a son, Manzano was in a very special position unlike many other slaves at the time. To a certain degree, he was a ‘privileged’ slave. Yet, his case also demonstrates a general aspect of slavery that is often overlooked: the necessary inter-relational dependency between whites and blacks. While the burden of slavery was being lifted in all other parts of America, the system survived in Cuba against all odds and threats and even outlived Manzano himself. Manzano was freed through the action of abolitionist friends in 1836, but the oppressive system survived and affected him in all his doings. In 1843, he was accused of being complicit in a slave revolt, which was violently suppressed in the so-called escalera affair.24 Manzano was imprisoned for one year. After he came out of the prison, he never 24  ‘Escalera’ means ladder and the affair was called the “escalera affair” because suspects were tied to ladders, until they ‘revealed’ the plans of revolt (Gott 2004, 65).

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wrote again. Maybe, he was disillusioned; maybe, he finally lost his capacity for love and poetry. Maybe, his silence was another form of protest. We do not know. But his work remains one of the strongest and most unique testaments and denunciations of slavery that we have from the Spanish empire—both his autobiography and, as I have argued, his drama. Through the form of tragedy, his works demonstrate the cruel and subtle mechanisms that keep the oppressed in place within a household or a family. The forensic dimension is related to the demonstration of moments of physical and psychological violence, but first and foremost to the demonstration of the systemic character of the violence that could otherwise appear as ‘only’ idiosyncratic and related to particularly evil persons. The tragic form helps turn individualized suffering and weakness into a starting point for a reflection on structural evils, solidarity and rights. Vulnerability and the acknowledgment of a general susceptibility to suffering opens the door to a less heroic but more democratic understanding of rights.

References Aching, Gerard. 2015. Freedom from liberation: Slavery, sentiment, and literature in Cuba, Blacks in the diaspora. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Azougarh, Abdeslam. 2000. Juan Francisco Manzano : esclavo poeta en la isla de cuba. Valencia: Episteme. Barnet, Miguel. 1966. Biografía de un cimarrón. La Habana: Academia de ciencias de la República de Cuba. Instituto de etnología y folklore. Bergero, Adriana J. 2005. Escritura, vida cotidiana y resignificaciones en La Habana de Juan Francisco Manzano. Afro-Hispanic review 24 (2): 7–32. Branche, Jerome. 2001. Mulato entre negros (y blancos): Writing, Race, the Antislavery Question, and Juan Francisco Manzanos Autobiografia. Bulletin of Latin American Research 20 (1): 63–87. https://doi.org/10.1111/ 1470-­9856.00005. Brown, Kate. 2015. Vulnerability and young people: Care and social control in policy and practice. Bristol: Policy Press. Butler, Judith, and Athena Athanasiou. 2013. Dispossession: The performative in the political, Polity conversations series. 1st ed. Oxford: Polity. Cantor, Paul A. 2004. Shakespeare, Hamlet. In Landmarks of world literature, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Casanova-Marengo, Ilia. 2002. El intersticio de la colonia : ruptura y mediacion en la narrativa antiesclavista cubana, Nexos y Diferencias. Estudios de la Cultura de América Latina. Vol. 3. Madrid: Iberoamericana.

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Domínguez, Daylet. 2021. Cuban literature before 1920: Antislavery, historiography, women’s writing, and the nation. In Caribbean literature in transition, 1800–1920, ed. Evelyn O'Callaghan and Tim Watson, 309–324. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Draper, Susana. 2002. Voluntad de Intelectual: Juan Francisco Manzano Entre Las Redes de Un Humanismo Sin Derechos. Chasqui 31 (1): 3–17. Escolano, Damian V. Solano. 2021. En el umbral del horror: Tecnicas y funciones del terror en Autobiografia de un esclavo de Juan Francisco Manzano. Latin American Research Review 56 (1): 113–125. https://doi.org/10.25222/ larr.747. Friol, Roberto. 1977. Suite Para Juan Francisco Manzano. La Habana: Editorial Arte y Literatura. Ganteau, Jean-Michel, and Susana Onega. 2017. Victimhood and vulnerability in 21st century fiction, Routledge interdisciplinary perspectives on literature. Vol. 74. New York: Routledge. Gott, Richard. 2004. Cuba: A new history. New Haven: Yale University Press. Hegel, G.W.F. 1998. Aesthetics: Lectures on fine art. Vol. 1. Clarendon Press. Jackson, Richard L. 1979. Black writers in Latin America. Albuquerque: University of Mexico Press. Kierkegaard, Søren. 2013. Kierkegaard’s writing, III, Part I: Either/or, Kierkegaard’s writings. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Lienhard, Martin. 2008. Disidentes, rebeldes, insurgentes : resistencia indígena y negra en América Latina. Ensayos de historia testimonial, Nexos y Diferencias. Estudios de la Cultura de América Latina. Vol. 21. Frankfurt am Main: Vervuert Verlagsgesellschaft. Luis, William. 2007. Introducción a Juan Francisco Manzano: Autobiografía del esclavo poeta y otras escritos. In Juan Francisco Manzano: Autobiografía del esclavo poeta y otras escritos, ed. William Luis, 13–73. Vervuert: Iberoamericana. Manzano, Juan Francisco 1996. Autobiography of a slave = Autobiografía de un esclavo. Trans. Evelyn Picon Garfield. Detroit (Michigan, Estados Unidos): Wayne State University Press. ———. 2007. Autobiografía del esclavo poeta y otros escritos. In El fuego nuevo. Textos recobrados, vol. 3. Madrid: Iberoamericana Editorial Vervuert. ———. 2009. Zafira. Barcelona: Linkgua. Mar, Gallego. 2012. Esclavitud y escritura transgresora: La "Autobiografía" de Juan Francisco Manzano. Guaraguao (Barcelona, Spain) 16 (39): 49–64. Menke, Christoph. 2009. Tragic play: Irony and theater from Sophocles to Beckett, Columbia themes in philosophy, social criticism, and the arts. New York: Columbia University Press. Miller, Marilyn Grace. 2008. Imitation and Improvisation in Juan Francisco Manzano’s Zafira. Colonial Latin American Review 17 (1): 49–71. https:// doi.org/10.1080/10609160802025441.

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———. 2010. Reading Juan Francisco Manzano in the wake of Alexander von Humboldt. Atlantic studies (Abingdon, England) 7 (2): 163–189. https:// doi.org/10.1080/14788811003700316. Miller, Marilyn. 2019. Tengo de árabes noble descendencia: orientalismo y el retorno al país natal en Zafira de Juan Francisco Manzano. In Moros en la costa. Orientalismo en Latinoamérica, ed. Silvia Nagy-Zekmi, 91–110. Frankfurt a. M., Madrid: Iberoamericana Vervuert. Molloy, Sylvia. 1991. From serf to self: The autobiography of Juan Francisco Manzano. In At face value: Autobiographical writing in Spanish America, 36–54. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Moore, Alexandra Schultheis. 2016. Vulnerability and security in human rights literature and visual culture, Routledge interdisciplinary perspectives on literature. Vol. 56. New York: Routledge. Olney, James. 1984. ‘I was born’: Slave narratives, their status as autobiography and as literature. Callaloo 20: 46–73. https://doi.org/10.2307/2930678. Olsen, Margaret Mary. 2007. Manzano’s “Zafira” and the performance of Cuban nationhood. Hispanic Review LXXV (2): 135–158. Ortiz, Fernando. 2002. Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azúcar : (advertencia de sus contrastes agrarios, económicos, históricos y sociales, su etnografía y su transculturación). In Letras Hispánicas, 1st ed. Madrid: Cátedra. Roche, Mark William. 1997. Tragedy and comedy: A systematic study and a critique of Hegel, SUNY series in Hegelian studies. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Romney, Abraham. 2015. Rhetoric from the Margins: Juan Francisco Manzano's Autobiografía de un esclavo. Rhetoric Society Quarterly 45 (3): 237–249. https://doi.org/10.1080/02773945.2015.1032855. Schulman, Ivan A. 1996. Introduction to Juan Francisco Manzano: Autobiography of a slave = Autobiografía de un esclavo. In Autobiography of a slave = Autobiografía de un esclavo, ed. Ivan A. Schulman, 5–38. Detroit (Michigan, USA): Wayne State University Press. Sweeney, Fionnghuala. 2004. Atlantic countercultures and the networked text: Juan Francisco Manzano, R. R. Madden and the Cuban slave narrative. Forum for modern language studies 40 (4): 401. Vernant, Jean Pierre, and Pierre Vidal-Naquet. 1988. Myth and tragedy in ancient Greece. New York: Zone Books.

CHAPTER 8

Epilogue: Forensic Theatricality and Human Rights

Without the eyes there is not just blindness, there is nothing. There is no existence. The artificer brings to life sight and truth and presence. (Ondaatje 2001, 99)

In a striking scene in Michael Ondaatje’s novel Anil’s Ghost (2001), two forensic anthropologists ask an old forensic archeologist for help in reconstructing the face of a young man—presumably, a victim of the death squads in the Sri Lankan civil war in the 1980s—on the basis of a skull. The old man tells them an anecdote about a century-old, highly ritualized way of painting eyes on Buddha statues. A special artist is needed, he says, and the eyes are always added as the very last thing. The eyes are what bring the statue to life: ‘Without the eyes there is not just blindness, there is nothing. There is no existence. The artificer brings to life sight and truth and presence’ (Ondaatje 2001, 99). But the eyes of the Buddha are so terrifying that even the artist who paints them cannot look directly into them. When the artist is about to paint the eyes, he turns his back to the statue, another man holds up a mirror to Buddha’s face: …[T]he artificer puts the brush over his shoulder and paints in the eyes without looking directly at the face. He uses just the reflection to guide

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 K.-M. Simonsen, Slavery and the Forensic Theatricality of Human Rights in the Spanish Empire, Palgrave Studies in Literature, Culture and Human Rights, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31531-2_8

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him—so only the mirror receives the direct image of the glance being created’ (Ondaatje 2001, 99).

In many ways, this is an apt image of the forensic enterprise: it is a collective job; it takes place in the liminal space between life and death; it produces ‘life’ out of death; it aims at creating a precise vision of the object: ‘sight and truth and presence’. Yet, it can only use indirect methodologies: measurements of the skull, marks on the skeleton, and artistic re-imagination. The materiality of the skull (the torso of the Buddha statue) and the imagination (the reflected glance in the mirror) work together to revivify the dead man: To make him ‘speak’ about the violence to which he has been exposed. Forensic literature aims at the same thing: It revivifies the past to understand the specificities of crimes committed in order to call for justice for the victims; but, unlike forensic anthropology, forensic literature does not have any bones to investigate in the laboratory. Instead, it turns the text itself into a forensic laboratory. The literary text uses an investigative aesthetics to explore crimes and constitutes an initial forensic forum for these crimes. Investigative aesthetics use aesthetic strategies as a tool to discover truth through an expanded and diversified form of sensing. As pointed out by Matthew Fuller and Eyal Weizman, ‘To aesthetisize is not to prettify or to decorate it, but to render it more attuned to sensing’ (Fuller and Weizman 2021, 33). Sensing is about registering external data, but it is also sense-making. Bones ‘make good witnesses’, as Clyde Snow famously stated (Keenan and Weizman 2012, 66), and a skeleton may contain a whole biography. But since the dead person cannot speak, someone else must interpret the signs and tell the story. Seeing is closely connected with the obligation to speak. It is an ethical position ‘because opening one’s ability to sense is opening oneself to the experience of pain, as opposed to the danger of developing an anaesthesia to political injustice’ (Fuller and Weizman 2021, 14). It is risky and difficult. Truth may be hidden behind material, psychological or ideological barriers, or the writer may be blinded by the horror of the events he/she investigates.

Death as a Theatrical Rhetorical Device The history of slavery is marked by violence and death. As argued by Orlando Patterson and Juan Francisco Manzano, the slave is a person who is dead to society and always threatened by literal death (Patterson 2018,

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5; Manzano 2007, 125). In all the works studied in this book, death is ever-present—whether physically, psychologically or socially. It is present as a documented fact or a real threat to enslaved people. Death is an ontological non-state, a termination of everything. But, in the forensic text, death (or the dead body) is the investigative, epistemological, moral and rhetorical starting point. Morally, death serves as a ‘natural’ point zero for rethinking equality in social relations. This happens most obviously in Micael de Carvajal’s Cortes de la Muerte (The Court of Death) from 1557 in which the allegorical figure of Death functions as the great equalizer among men at their moment of death, but it is also present in Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda’s spectacular death scenes, which serve to vindicate the rights of the enslaved, or in Bartolomé de Las Casas’ atrocity story, which turns the massacres of Native Americans into an argument for their political and legal rights. As Mikhail Bakhtin says, death is a liminal space in which social hierarchies may be renegotiated (Bakhtin 1984, 10, 16). The moment of death and the rhetorical demonstration of the dead body are highly theatrical—in the anti-dramatic sense. Though murder is always related to intense drama, death halts the action and reorganizes our sensible registers. It demands minute attention and reflection. Using ‘death’ or the effects of radical violence as the rhetorical point of departure for discourses on slavery comes with a risk since it radicalizes the victimization of the enslaved. Bartolomé de las Casas was accused of excessive pathos and hyperbolic exaggeration of the helplessness of the Native Americans, which, according to Daniel Castro, robbed them of volition and the capacity for self-defense (Castro 2007, 113). Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda was accused of sentimentalizing the sufferings of her mulatto protagonist without indicating a path to real social change (Branche 1998, 16). James Dawes has argued that there is a danger of inappropriate voyeurism (Dawes 2007, 8–9). Saidiya Hartman even doubts whether it is possible ‘to revisit the scene of subjection without replicating the grammar of violence’ (Hartman 2008, 4). Stigmatization of the victim is a recurrent feature even in abolitionist texts. Though Lynn Hunt has argued for our ability to feel empathy across sexual, social and national boundaries (Hunt 2008, 38), critical research also points out that cultural recognition patterns affect our ability to show empathy toward victims who are different from ourselves (Hesford 2011, 38). In this book, I have argued that the cool grammar of political and legal rights is both an antidote to perverse emotional indulgence in other people’s pain and an antidote to hierarchical cultural recognition patterns.

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Ideally, political and legal rights are independent of culture, religion and race, and the human rights thinking in the sixteenth century emphasizes this point. However, even in the case of Las Casas, who is arguably the ‘coolest’ defender of the rights of the Native Americans, theatricality is needed to investigate and highlight the details of the crimes and to make a convincing argument. His texts demonstrate a close connection between logos and theatricality. While he is now accepted as a precursor of human rights advocacy, one could argue that he is also a precursor for the use of theatricality in law. By using theatrical strategies, Las Casas works against the Western legal tradition, which, according to Marett Leiboff, is dominated by an ‘antitheatrical prejudice’ (Leiboff 1). As she formulates it, in legal jurisprudence, logos ‘becomes a cloak of rationality which is assumed to keep the physical, visceral and corporal at bay’ (Leiboff 2020, 31). Normal jurisprudence is occupied with the rationality of plot-making: demonstrating logical, necessary and narrative relations between causes and effects. However, as argued by Alan M. Dershowitz, very rarely life acts like a logical narration and our wish to find such a narration may blind us to reality itself (Dershowitz 1996, 100–01). Or as argued by Marett Leiboff: The visceral reverberates beneath the surface but ‘mostly papered over in the language of doctrine and principle’ (Leiboff 2020, 31). Leiboff argues that we should embrace the theatrical as a tool in jurisprudence since it avoids the preordained plot and allows us to look behind our assumptions (Leiboff 2020, 31): The theatrical … forces us to respond and react, to learn, to be traumatized, to be profoundly challenged, not intellectually or rationally (or solely so) but acquire something of that imagination and experience needed to notice when law or its interpreters, goes wrong, through other means, through the body. (Leiboff 2020, 25)

When Bartolomé de Las Casas wrote his Brevísima relación de la destruición de las Indias (A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies) in 1542 (published 1552), he certainly felt that something had gone completely wrong and that the laws did not protect the Indians against massacres and enslavement. He used a highly theatrical form of denunciation that ‘literally’ impressed the horrific murders on to the minds of the audience. Logos did not seem strong enough to convince the king of the atrocities

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committed in America. Theatricality helped Las Casas prompt the audience to notice the trauma of the population of America, not as the distant pain of some strangers thousands of miles away but as the pain of real persons—inflicted on them by the Spaniards themselves. The massacres abroad, thus, became relevant to morality at home. Through an allegorical theatricality, Las Casas turned the atrocity story into a moral telescope for a political Spanish forum. In this book, I have investigated five forms of theatrical strategies or modes: allegorical, carnivalesque, tragicomic, melodramatic and tragic. Each of them could be explored much more by expanding the number of examples and theoretical reflection. The book only provides a first analysis of the function and (dis)advantages of each mode in relation to the forensic aim. In part I, I analyze primarily the allegorical mode that has the advantage of situating an ungraspable act of crime within a recognizable ideological pattern that makes it easier for audiences to relate to it. In Part II, I focus on ‘comic’ modes, that is, modes that use popular forms of expression to convince audiences through laughter or ritualized, festive forms that make it possible to create a corporeal and collective foundation of rights. In Part III, I focus on the ‘tragic’ modes that make it possible to transcend individual suffering and understand human rights through a substantial and relational ethics. I argue for a rights thinking based on vulnerability. Though all of them seem highly dramatic, I have argued that the theatricality connected to their forensic dimension is anti-dramatic. As such, it is a theatricality that is mostly known from post-dramatic theater. It focuses on everything that is not drama or plot: the corporeal, the scenic, the auditory and the visual. Through these anti-dramatic modes, forensic truth is produced. In the case of Las Casas, the expositional, repetitive series of images of violence and moral allegory are used as theatrical investigative tools. In Lope de Vega, there is an active and critical use of Christian emblems. In Carvajal and the anonymous play Tragedia del fin de Atawallpa, the oral and ritualized repetitions known from traditions such as the Feast of Corpus Christi, the danse macabre, or old courtesy culture create carnivalesque scenes of justice. In Gómez de Avellaneda’s novel, the action is often halted to give place to tableaux vivants that crystallize the liminal states between life and death and force the reader to moral reflection. Finally, in Juan Francisco Manzano, it is the rhythm of tragic contrast that embodies the injustices of slavery.

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The works do not deny the relevance of logos but they use the means of theatricality to reach logos. Theatricality makes it possible to pay attention to both the details and the conditions of violence, and their embeddedness in ideological dogmas and social structure. Though forensics are focused on one object or on one or several specific victims, the aesthetic form of forensics is always relational and points to the relation between dead bodies and a wider material and political context (Fuller and Weizman 2021, 35). The aim of a forensic discourse is to convince an audience. When we talk about historical texts, this is a complicated affair. One text may have several types of audiences in its own time and audiences may change over time. Some audiences are expected, some are unexpected. Las Casas’ Brevísima relación was explicitly addressed to the King (who was supposed to stop the enslavement of indigenous people in America) and implicitly to the broader Spanish public (who were meant to stop their moral support of the conquests). But as we know, he had a very large audience abroad in the competing empires of Britain, The Netherlands and France—an audience he probably did not think about when he wrote his text. He did not intend to create a Black Legend about the Spanish Conquest that would haunt Spain almost to this day. Yet his atrocity story had moral and political repercussions beyond the national borders of Spain and beyond his own time. It created an influential matrix of the genre of the atrocity story. All the texts studied in this book have an intricate history of production and/or reception that complicates the question about audiences. But they have all become part of the international slavery and human rights archive. We read them to understand the original forensic intentionality but also to understand their transhistorical impact on present audiences.

Slavery and Human Rights in the Spanish Empire It has been argued that all laws related to slavery are racist and not created to secure the rights of the enslaved but to keep them in their place (Lucena Salmoral 2000, 4–6). Quoting Stuart Hall, Vera Kutzinski has argued that the majority of texts written in colonial America suffer from ‘inferential racism’, meaning that they have ‘racist premises and propositions inscribed in them as a set of unquestioned assumptions’ (Kutzinski 1993, 14). In Chap. 2, I have argued for the ambiguity of the Spanish laws against slavery and the pragmatics of the context under which they were meant to be

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applied—often, with harsh resistance from slave owners, encomenderos and sacarocrats. It is easy to depict the Spanish anti-slavery struggle over the centuries as deeply flawed and unsuccessful, too idealistic and theoretical, and too much infected by the ideology of the empire. It is a fact that, despite all the laws and anti-slavery campaigns, slavery continued to the end of the nineteenth century. However, in this book, the focus has not been on the success or failure of the anti-slavery laws. I have been more interested in studying the anti-slavery rhetoric in the literature that was clearly inspired by the legal philosophy behind those laws. Bartolomé de Las Casas was a direct or indirect inspiration for all the writers in this book: Micael de Carvajal, Lope de Vega, Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda and Juan Francisco Manzano. Though they have different literary strategies, there is a common thread from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth century rights thinking. In many histories of human rights, Spanish rights thinking is often overlooked or dismissed, which is partly due to Spain’s marginal position in the general history of European modernity and partly due to the fact that the development of rights in Spain did not seem to fit the modern understanding of human rights.1 In addition, the long history of slavery in the Spanish empire (1500–1886) and the growth of slavery in Spanish

1  In histories of natural and human rights, it is quite normal to start in Antiquity (Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics), and then ‘fast-forward’ to the American and French revolutions with, perhaps, a brief mention of Spain, as Daniel Edelstein has aptly phrased it (Edelstein 2014, 530), or to leap from antiquity directly to Hugo Grotius and Samuel Pufendorf or Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, as Leo Strauss does in Natural Right and History (1950) (Strauss 1999), or simply to start in the British, French or North American eighteenth century. These strategies occur in such histories of human rights as Micheline Ishay’s The History of Human Rights: From Ancient Time to Globalization Era (Ishay 2004), Francis Oakley’s Natural Law, Laws of Nature, Natural Rights. Continuity and Discontinuity in the History of Ideas (Oakley 2005), Costas Douzinas’s Human Rights and Empire (Douzinas 2007), Lynn Hunt’s Inventing Human Rights: A History (Hunt 2008), Jenny Martínez’s The Slave Trade and the Origin of Modern International Law (Martinez 2012), Justine Lacroix and Jean-Yves Pranchère. Human Rights on Trial: A Genealogy of the Critique of Human Rights (Lacroix et al. 2018), David N. Stamos’ The Myth of Universal Human Rights: Its Origin, History, and Explanation, along with a more humane way (Stamos 2016), and Aryeh Neier’s The International Human Rights Movement: A History (Neier 2021). It is also the case on United Nations homepage: ‘International Human Rights Law: A Short History’, https:// www.un.org/en/chronicle/article/international-human-rights-law-short-history. Many other examples could be quoted.

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America in the nineteenth century when other European empires abolished it have given Spain a bad reputation in the history of human rights. The traditional focus in human rights histories is on developments in the Enlightenment period in Britain, the United States and France. The typical beacons in human rights history—beyond the British Magna Carta (1215), and Bill of Rights (1689), which are often quoted as early examples—are the American Declaration of Independence (1776), the American Bill of Rights (1789), and the French La declaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen (1789) (Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen) (Edelstein 2014, 530). However, if the focus in human rights histories is only on these few declarations, with an emphasis on human rights declarations in the Enlightenment, nuance in the understanding of human rights is lost. The Spanish history provides essential insights into human rights in early modernity, their legal and ideological underpinnings, and their relation to the history of slavery. In recent years, skepticism against seeing early ‘natural rights’ as ‘human rights’ has been brushed aside, and new attention has been given to Bartolomé de Las Casas and the Salamanca school (Orique and Roldán-­ Figueroa 2018). Many scholars now move beyond the Black Legend of the Spanish conquest to understand the intricacies of early rights thinking and its relation to later developments. Some theoreticians claim that the difference between natural rights and human rights has been overstated. Brian Tierney uses the words interchangeably in his book on natural rights. As he explains: ‘the term “human rights” is often used nowadays to indicate a lack of any necessary commitment to the philosophical and theological systems formerly associated with the older term “natural rights”. But the two concepts are essentially the same’ (Tierney 1997, 2, note 4). One could argue that the word ‘natural’ in contrast with the word ‘human’ (in human rights) has the advantage of shifting attention away from the autonomous human being toward the conditioned position of the human being. This complicates the matter. As pointed out by Antonio Enrique Pérez Luño, three different understandings of the concept of nature lie behind the word ‘natural’ in historical natural rights theory: nature as divine creation, nature as physical cosmos, and nature as reason. The last point is based on the Thomistic understanding of the human subject as a social being embedded in a social life (Luño 1990, iv). In the early rights debates, the question was raised whether the indigenous people of the New World had rights because they were human beings created

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by God, because they, like all human beings, belonged to the natural world (the physical cosmos), or because they were rational beings with politically ordered societies that needed to be respected. Were they protected by the law of God, the law of physical nature, or ius gentium (international law and the law against unjust war)? These discussions did not lose vigor over the years. As David Boucher has argued, all through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and even today, the dialogue with natural rights and natural law continues (Boucher 2009, 2). In literature, this dialogue may be seen to unfold in dramatic ways. When the Native Americans in Micael de Carvajal’s 1557 play Cortes de la Muerte (Court of Death) cry out about the injustice of the violence against them, they do it with a collective voice, representing an estate within the Spanish empire. They do it as political citizens, as natural human beings, and as newly converted Christians. When the mulatto protagonist of Gómez de Avellaneda’s novel, Sab, denounces slavery as a crime, he denounces it as a crime against civil society, against nature, and against God. Secular, natural and religious arguments intertwine in different and complex ways. The debates in the sixteenth century provide a complex starting point for this perception. Another interest spurred by the Spanish human rights debates is the close connection between rights and politics in the context of colonialism and globalization. Whereas human rights in a French or American context are often associated with national constitutive moments (Edelstein 2014, 530) or with late abolitionism (eighteenth century and on) (Martinez 2012), Spanish human rights are directly related to the first conflictual encounter with a new world. José-Manuel Barreto argues that the inclusion of Spanish rights thinking gives human rights ‘a colonial origin’ in which human rights are not based on ‘lofty’ ideals but are a concrete response to a ‘crisis brought about by colonialism’ (Barreto 2013, 21). Rethinking human rights from the perspective of colonialism and slavery provides human rights history with a markedly more critical starting point than thinking about human rights from the starting point of modern liberal philosophy and abolitionism. It also makes it possible to connect different moments of resistance to the empire to later developments of human rights. It has been argued that the independence movement in Latin America was in a large part inspired by the early human rights campaigns (Adorno 2007, x, 80–81). Paolo G. Carozza has claimed that there is a link between Las Casas’ thinking on human rights and the Latin American commitment

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to the idea of human rights in 1948 and later (Carozza 2003, 289). He points out that the impact of the Latin American delegations on the Human Rights Declaration was to socialize those rights. Their understanding of rights ‘consistently emphasized the social dimensions of the human person from the family to the social and economic structures in which she realizes her dignity’ (Carozza 2003, 287). It would take a lot more space to delineate this development. Suffice it here to conclude that the denunciation of slavery and the arguments for the rights of the ‘other’ that were articulated in sixteenth-century Spain are some of the most complex and radical that we have and that they had a strong influence on the rights debates in later centuries and on the forensic literature dedicated to the investigation of the crime of slavery.

References Adorno, Rolena. 2007. The polemics of possession in Spanish American narrative. New Haven: Yale University Press. Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1984. Rabelais and his world. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Barreto, José-Manuel. 2013. Imperialism and decolonization as scenarios of human rights history. In Human rights from a third world perspective: Critique, history and international law, ed. José-Manuel Barreto, 140–171. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publisher. Boucher, David. 2009. The limits of ethics in international relations: Natural law, natural rights, and human rights in transition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Branche, Jerome. 1998. Ennobling savagery? Sentimentalism and the subaltern in “Sab”. Afro-Hispanic review 17 (2): 12–23. Carozza, Paolo G. 2003. From conquest to constitutions: Retrieving a Latin American tradition of the idea of human rights. Human Rights Quarterly 25 (2): 281–313. https://doi.org/10.1353/hrq.2003.0023. Castro, Daniel. 2007. Another face of empire: Bartolomé de las Casas, indigenous rights, and ecclesiastical imperialism, Latin America otherwise. Durham: Duke University Press. Dawes, James. 2007. That the world may know: Bearing witness to atrocity. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Dershowitz, Alan M. 1996. Life is not a dramatic narrative. In Law’s stories, ed. Peter Brooks and Paul Gewirtz, 99–105. Yale University Press. Douzinas, Costas. 2007. Human rights and empire: The political philosophy of cosmopolitanism, a glasshouse book. New York, NY: Routledge-Cavendish. Edelstein, Dan. 2014. Enlightenment rights talk. The Journal of Modern History 86 (3): 530–565. https://doi.org/10.1086/676691.

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Fuller, Matthew, and Eyal Weizman. 2021. Investigative aesthetics: Conflicts and commons in the politics of truth. London, England: Verso Books. Hartman, Saidiya. 2008. Venus in two acts. Small Axe: A Journal of Criticism 12 (2): 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1215/-­12-­2-­1. Hesford, Wendy. 2011. Spectacular rhetorics: Human rights visions, recognitions, feminisms, next wave. Durham: Duke University Press. Hunt, Lynn Avery. 2008. Inventing human rights: A history. Paperback ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. Ishay, Micheline R. 2004. The history of human rights: From ancient times to the globalization era. In , ed. J.  María Nieto Ibáñez. Berkeley: University of California Press. Keenan, Thomas, and Eyal Weizman. 2012. Mengele’s skull: The advent of a forensic aesthetics. Berlin: Sternberg Press. Kutzinski, Vera M. 1993. Sugar’s secrets: Race and the erotics of Cuban nationalism, new world studies. Charlottesville, Va: University Press of Virginia. Lacroix, Justine, Jean-Yves Pranchère, and Gabrielle Maas. 2018. Human rights on trial: A genealogy of the critique of human rights, human rights in history. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Leiboff, Marett. 2020. Towards a theatrical jurisprudence, space, materiality and the normative. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. Lucena Salmoral, Manuel. 2000. Leyes para esclavos : El ordenamiento jurídico sobre la condición, tratamiento, defensa y represión de los esclavos. Creative commons. https://www.larramendi.es/es/consulta/registro.do?id=1151: Biblioteca Virtual de Polígrafos. Luño, Antonio-Enrique Pérez. 1990. Introducción. In Bartolomé de las Casas. De Regia Potestate. Obras Completas, ed. Jaime González Rodríguez, vol. 12, I– XXXIX. Madrid: Alianza. Manzano, Juan Francisco. 2007. Autobiografía del esclavo poeta y otros escritos. In El fuego nuevo. Textos recobrados, vol. 3. Madrid: Iberoamericana Editorial Vervuert. Martinez, Jenny S. 2012. The slave trade and the origins of international human rights law. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Neier, Aryeh. 2021. The international human rights movement: A history. In Human rights and crimes against humanity, New ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Oakley, Francis. 2005. Natural law, laws of nature, natural rights: Continuity and discontinuity in the history of ideas. New  York: Continuum International Pub. Group. Ondaatje, Michael. 2001. Anil’s ghost. London: Picador. Orique, David Thomas, and Rady Roldán-Figueroa. 2018. Bartolomé de las Casas, OP: History, philosophy, and theology in the age of European expansion, studies in the history of Christian traditions. Vol. 189. Leiden: Brill.

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Patterson, Orlando. 2018. Slavery and social death: A comparative study: With a new preface. First Harvard University Press paperback ed. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Stamos, David N. 2016. The myth of universal human rights: Its origin, history, and explanation, along with a more humane way. London: Routledge. Strauss, Leo. 1999. Natural right and history, Charles R.  Walgreen foundation lectures. Chicago, Ill: University of Chicago Press. Tierney, Brian. 1997. The idea of natural rights: Studies on natural rights, natural law and church law, 1150–1625, Emory University studies in law and religion. Vol. 5. Atlanta, Ga: Scholars Press.

Index1

A Abbé Gregoire, 53 Abolition, abolitionism, abolitionist, 5, 15, 17, 27–30, 33, 46, 48, 49, 51, 53–55, 55n38, 95–102, 210, 222, 223, 230, 245, 250, 250n2, 251, 251n4, 265, 269, 285, 291, 297 Aching, Gerard, 49, 50, 256, 264, 266, 266n17, 268 Adorno, Rolena, 5, 13, 25, 27, 32, 39, 41, 52, 53, 64, 69, 70, 73, 78n16, 80, 95, 96, 297 Adversarial, 127 Africa, African, 1, 2, 5, 7, 12, 14, 15, 25, 27–34, 44, 45, 47, 51–54, 89, 96, 97, 101, 213, 232, 236, 242, 253, 258, 264, 265, 270, 272

Allegorical, 14, 15, 63–102, 124, 126, 128, 132, 139–141, 148, 150, 159, 169, 171, 173, 181, 182, 270, 273, 291, 293 Allegory, 15, 65, 66, 76, 253, 270, 283, 293 Almagro, Diego de, 139–141, 143, 148, 149, 149n27, 149n28, 157 America, 4–6, 11, 24–26, 28, 30, 31, 33–35, 36n20, 37, 39–41, 51–54, 55n38, 69–74, 78n16, 89, 92, 94, 116, 119, 121–123, 139, 149, 152, 168, 169, 174, 175, 178, 181, 181n23, 190, 190n32, 199, 237, 239, 243, 293, 294 Aponte, José Antonio, 47, 243, 273 Aquinas, Thomas, 6, 35, 94, 147, 156 Arab, Arabic, 97, 270, 271

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 K.-M. Simonsen, Slavery and the Forensic Theatricality of Human Rights in the Spanish Empire, Palgrave Studies in Literature, Culture and Human Rights, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31531-2

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INDEX

Arango y Parreño, Francisco de, 45, 46 Aristotle, Aristotelean, 32, 33, 35, 41, 87, 94, 253, 281, 295n1 Arte Nuevo de hacer comedias, 171, 171n6 Atahualpa, 16, 110, 110n3, 114, 138, 139, 139n20, 145–147, 147n26, 149, 149n27, 150, 152, 154, 156, 160–161 Atau Wallpa, 110n3, 139–148, 141n22, 145n23, 150, 152, 155–159, 162 Atrocity, 66, 69, 69n5, 71–73, 77, 81, 82, 118–120, 162, 211, 212, 238, 239, 292 Atrocity story, 6, 15, 39, 64–102, 69n5, 80n19, 111, 169, 291, 293, 294 Auto, 114, 124 Autobiografía de un esclavo, 17, 50, 249 Autobiography, 17, 50, 249–251, 253–255, 259n11, 260, 261, 264–269, 274, 284, 286 B Bakhtin, Michail, 112n5, 113, 128–130, 133, 136, 291 Barbarian, 14, 32, 33, 42, 43, 64, 65, 67, 87, 88, 99, 101, 111, 175, 189, 191–196, 200 Barbarism, 67, 87, 101, 272–281 Benítez-Rojo, Antonio, 44, 54, 213, 213n2 Bergad, Laird, 28, 47, 233 Beyersdorff, Margot, 138n19, 154 Bible, 41, 146, 147, 156, 221 Bildung, 281 Billig, Michael, 187 Bishop, 72, 125, 132–134, 133n15

Black, 6, 17, 25, 30–33, 30n11, 32n16, 44–47, 50–53, 96–98, 96n47, 148, 211–213, 221, 225, 227, 230–234, 233n8, 236–239, 242, 255, 260, 266, 272, 277, 284, 285 Blackburn, Robin, 25, 27 Black Legend, 65, 70n6, 95–102, 294, 296 Boal, Augusto, 10, 66, 102 Branche, Jerome, 50, 210, 211, 222, 223, 226, 230, 231, 250, 252, 265, 265n16, 266, 291 Brevísima relación de la destruición de las indias, 5, 15, 39, 65, 65n3, 77, 95, 169, 212, 240, 292 Brooks, Peter, 9, 215, 216, 219, 244 Brunstetter, Daniel R., 38, 67, 89n31, 93, 98, 99, 101 Butler, Judith, 12, 80, 252 C Cacique, 82, 110, 125, 126, 174, 191, 199, 213, 239 Camagüey, 47, 50, 212, 213, 216, 236–238 Cañadas, Ivan, 170 Cannibal, cannibalistic, 41, 42, 67, 86, 136, 170, 197, 198 Canon law, 34 Cárdenas Bunsen, José A., 64, 94, 95 Carnival, carnivalesque, 14, 15, 110–162, 293 Carpentier, Alejo, 237 Carvajal, Michael de, 15, 16, 110–162, 226, 291, 293, 295, 297 Cascales, Francisco, 200 Castro, Daniel, 38, 39, 64, 66, 67, 71, 81, 82, 87, 88, 91, 291

 INDEX 

Catholicism, catholic, 35, 38, 54, 93, 114, 135, 136, 170, 243 Catholic monarchs, the, 24, 31, 35, 168, 172, 173, 176, 184 Challkuchima, 140, 143 Chayante, 138, 138n19 Christ, 36, 43, 135, 136, 179, 185, 190, 194–196 Christianity, Christian, 25, 26, 32n14, 34, 38, 42, 68, 76, 78, 81, 82, 94, 98, 99, 102, 114, 117, 118n10, 120, 122, 123, 131, 133, 135–137, 140, 140n21, 146–148, 171–173, 174n10, 175, 176, 181–187, 189–191, 193–197, 201, 224, 225, 255, 293, 297 Citizen, 4, 6, 13, 14, 14n3, 67, 84, 87, 88, 111, 258, 274, 280, 281, 297 Civilization, 45, 92, 272–281 Colón, Cristóbal, see Columbus, Christopher Colonialism, colonial, 5, 6, 23, 27, 29–31, 34, 40, 48n36, 51, 54, 96, 98, 100, 111, 114, 123, 138, 155, 160, 161, 169, 175, 197–201, 210, 213n2, 216, 222, 224, 232, 244, 253, 270, 273, 283–285, 294, 297 Columbus, Christopher, 167–201, 185n29 Comedia, 168n1 Comedy, comic, 15, 16, 123, 128, 129, 133, 134, 137, 171, 176–186, 188–191, 197, 198, 200, 201, 293 Conflict, 6, 7, 14, 52, 67, 81, 161, 169, 170, 172, 176, 180, 183, 201, 215, 233, 253, 270, 274, 281–286

303

Conqueror, 6, 15, 16, 26, 29, 35, 52, 53, 66, 73–76, 78, 81–84, 86, 89, 91, 97, 99, 100, 110, 114, 117, 120–123, 134, 135, 139–141, 146n24, 147, 152, 159, 169, 170, 173, 175, 176, 183, 185, 190, 192, 196, 198, 199, 201, 211, 238 Conquest, 5, 14–16, 25–27, 31, 34, 41–44, 51, 65, 68–71, 68n4, 72n9, 73–78, 78n16, 81, 82, 85, 91, 95, 99, 110, 111, 114, 116–118, 141, 142, 148, 150, 161, 167–176, 180–184, 186, 190n32, 193, 195–197, 199–201, 232, 238, 294, 296 Cornejo Polar, Antonio, 157, 160 Corpus Christi, 15, 112–114, 124, 134n18, 162, 293 Cortes de la Muerte, 110, 115, 116, 118, 124, 125, 131, 291, 297 Court of death, 15, 110–162, 291, 297 Creole, 29, 33, 52, 53, 213 Cross, 135, 170, 172, 174, 175, 180, 185–191, 195, 196, 198 Cuba, Cuban, 4, 5, 15, 28, 31, 34, 44–51, 54, 64, 81, 88, 95, 209–217, 209n1, 213n2, 214n3, 222, 224, 226, 231, 233, 234, 236–238, 242–244, 249–251, 253, 265, 265n16, 269, 270, 283–285 D Dance of death, 124, 129, 130 Danse macabre, 114, 117, 122, 124–126, 128–137, 162, 293 D’Avenant, William, 100 Davies, Catherine, 209n1, 210, 214, 214n3

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INDEX

De Bry, Theodore, 15, 69, 76–78, 78n16, 79n17, 80–82, 134 Death, dead, 3, 25, 68, 110, 137–141, 178, 211, 223–230, 290–294 Defense, 29, 38n24, 54, 67, 68, 70, 83, 96, 99, 117, 120, 127, 128, 133, 161–162, 169, 173, 199, 234, 279 Dehumanization, 4, 86 De Indis, 39, 89 Del Monte, Domingo, 49, 50, 233, 249, 252, 260, 265–267, 265n15, 265n16, 266n17, 277 Diderot, Denis, 220, 221, 245 Douglas, Frederick, 251, 267n19 Drama, 8, 9, 16, 17, 67, 74–83, 111, 114, 125, 129, 133n15, 137–141, 138n19, 150, 159, 161, 167–179, 176n15, 184, 198, 199, 200n35, 201, 211, 215, 216, 219, 220, 225, 226, 234, 244, 253, 254, 269, 270, 272, 274, 276n22, 280, 282–284, 286, 291, 293 Dulcanquellín, 170, 172, 174, 175, 180, 181, 183, 187, 191–196, 198, 199, 201 Duviols, Pierre, 138n19 E Egalitarianism, 67, 98, 99, 240, 241 Emotion, 212, 215, 217, 221, 227, 228, 244, 245, 261 Emperor, 39, 125, 126, 139, 143–145, 147, 148, 150, 155, 156 Empire, 1–17, 23–55, 65, 68, 87, 99–101, 110–112, 117, 126, 139, 143, 144, 146, 149–152, 154, 155, 159, 160, 169, 172, 173, 198, 199, 286, 294–298

Encomendero, 29, 35–38, 40, 52, 64, 70n7, 85, 117, 295 Encomienda, 29, 30, 35, 37–40, 43, 44, 53, 70, 71, 85, 86 Encounter, 12, 13, 23, 33, 110, 131, 139, 141n22, 146, 147, 168, 168n3, 169, 172, 174, 176n15, 190, 191, 197–201, 231, 232, 297 Equality, 9, 53, 111, 113, 124–128, 137, 150, 159, 213, 221–223, 225, 242, 244, 253, 255, 268, 291 Equiano, Olaudah, 251, 267n19 Escalera, 47, 285, 285n24 Eucharist, 135, 136 F Ferdinand and Isabella, 35, 37, 42, 85, 168, 173, 175, 176, 182, 185, 191 Fernando and Isabel, see Ferdinand and Isabella Festa, Lynn, 231, 232 Fischer-Lichte, Erika, 7, 10, 75, 113 Forensic, forensis, 172, 211, 212, 242–245, 254, 259–264, 276, 281–286, 289–298 Forensic presentism, 16, 167–201 Foster, Verna A., 171, 178, 200, 201 Foxe, John, 100 Fried, Michael, 220 G Gender, 14n3, 264, 274 Gines de Sepúlveda, Juan, 32, 33, 41, 41n26, 44n30, 72n9, 86, 96, 116, 123, 136, 169, 182 God, 14, 25, 26n6, 34, 37, 42, 83, 84, 91, 94, 94n43, 98, 119, 126,

 INDEX 

130, 131, 133, 142, 143, 146, 146n24, 148, 155, 176, 179, 181, 183, 190n31, 193–196, 218, 219, 221, 222, 225, 239, 244, 265n15, 284, 297 Gold, 24, 36n20, 73, 90, 96n47, 119, 121, 122, 134, 135, 145, 147, 149, 158, 159, 173, 175, 176, 176n14, 181–184, 190n32, 201, 240 Gómez de Avellaneda, Gertrudis, 16, 50, 209–245, 261, 291, 293, 295, 297 Gothic, 215, 265 Grotius, Hugo, 101, 295n1 Guarini, Giambattista, 178 H Hamlet/Hamlet, 2, 276n22 Hanke, Lewis, 28, 35–37, 40, 70–72, 70n7, 72n9, 85, 147 Hegel, G. W. F., 189, 253, 254, 282, 283 Historia de las Indias, 68, 68n4, 71, 81–83, 96, 97, 172 History play, 168 Hobbes, Thomas, 101, 295n1 Honor, 53, 77, 119, 134, 169, 170n5, 183, 193, 271, 274, 276, 278–280, 282, 283 Honor play, 169, 197 Humanism, 11, 101, 285 Human right, 1–17, 23–55, 64–102, 112–114, 120, 131, 137, 161, 162, 191–196, 211, 212, 231, 252, 268, 285, 289–298 Hunt, Lynn, 11, 66, 67, 231, 291, 295n1 Hurtado de Toledo, Luis, 110n1, 115, 115n6, 116

305

I Inca, 16, 26, 26n8, 93, 111, 137, 138n19, 139, 141, 144, 145, 149, 150, 152, 154–157, 154n31, 154n32, 155n34, 159, 161 Indian, 15, 16, 26n7, 29, 30, 30n12, 30n13, 34n17, 35–43, 38n24, 53, 54, 64n1, 65–68, 70, 73, 75, 79–86, 88, 89, 89n31, 91–93, 95–99, 96n47, 110, 110n2, 111, 114–126, 128, 129, 134–138, 138n19, 140, 141n22, 143, 144, 146, 148–150, 154, 159–162, 168n3, 170, 173–176, 181, 185, 187, 189, 191, 193, 195, 197–199, 201, 213, 238, 240, 292 Indigenous, 14n3, 16, 17, 23, 26n10, 27, 29–34, 36, 39, 52, 54, 79, 81, 83, 86, 89, 91, 92, 95, 114, 115n7, 137, 138, 147, 152, 155n34, 169, 170, 172, 176, 180, 183, 184, 190, 195, 196, 199, 201, 211, 212, 224, 234, 237–239, 241, 242, 294, 296 Inequality, 14, 28, 79, 137, 147, 191, 222, 225, 244, 261 International law, 6, 7, 14, 15, 34, 51, 64, 69, 101, 111, 297 Interracial, 17, 55, 209–245 Irony, ironic, 15, 16, 78, 121, 124, 128–137, 157, 159, 173, 182, 183 Itier, César, 138n19 Ius gentium, 7, 34, 67, 139, 182, 297 Ius naturae, see Natural law

306 

INDEX

J Jáuregui, Carlos A., 110n1, 110n2, 115n7, 116n9, 117, 118, 123, 126, 135, 136 Jew, 97, 118, 118n10, 125, 126, 225 Judge, 3, 10, 66, 75, 116, 117, 123, 125–127, 136, 173, 181, 260 Justice, 2, 7, 8, 10, 17, 35, 36, 65, 89, 90, 110, 111, 114, 117, 122–124, 127, 128, 136–137, 139, 179, 181, 211, 221, 222, 225, 226, 241, 243, 244, 269, 282, 290, 293 Just war, 25, 34, 35, 42, 89, 89n31, 91, 92, 96, 139, 150 K Keenan, Thomas, 2, 3, 290 Kierkegaard, Søren, 254 King, 6, 15, 16, 26n6, 37, 39–41, 44–46, 67, 70–72, 74, 79n17, 79n18, 81, 82, 84–86, 91–94, 112, 113, 125, 140, 143, 145, 146, 149, 150, 152, 154–156, 155n34, 161, 162, 170, 172–175, 179, 182, 189, 191–196, 198, 201, 244, 273, 276, 278, 280, 292, 294 Kutzinski, Vera M., 209n1, 233, 294 L Lara, Jesús, 110n3, 110n4, 114, 137–139, 138n19, 141–149, 156–161 Las Casas, Bartolomé de, 5, 6, 15, 36, 38–44, 42n27, 43n29, 52–54, 54n37, 64–102, 110n2, 111, 116–118, 120, 160, 169, 169n4, 182, 186n30, 196, 201, 211, 240, 291–297

Lascasian, 53, 117, 123, 159 Laws of Burgos, 37–39, 38n24 Legalistic, 6, 27, 28, 33–35, 64, 279 Leyes de Burgos, 37 Leyes Nuevas, 30, 30n12, 39–41, 70, 85 Lienhard, Martin, 266 Locke, John, 101, 101n51, 295n1 Lope de Vega, Félix, 16, 110n2, 116, 116n8, 167–201, 293 Love, 14, 17, 36, 191–193, 192n33, 195, 196, 210, 212–224, 226–228, 232, 234, 235, 240, 241, 244, 250n3, 256, 271, 275–277, 280, 281, 284–286 Luis, William, 4n1, 210, 214, 224, 228, 231, 249n1, 250, 251n4, 255, 256n6, 259n10, 260n13, 265n15 Luño, Antonio Enrique Pérez, 83, 86, 88, 296 M Madden, Richard Robert, 46, 250, 250n2, 250n3, 266n18, 269 Maguire, Nancy Klein, 179 Manzano, Juan Francisco, 4, 17, 50, 209n1, 249–286, 290, 291, 293, 295 Maravall, Jose Antonio, 86n24, 112, 171, 184, 190, 201, 243 McKendrick, Melveena, 112, 171n6, 179 Melancholy, melancholic, 175, 178, 190, 211, 212, 218, 220, 221, 227, 242–244, 257, 260, 261, 277 Melodrama, melodramatic, 9, 14, 16, 17, 76, 209–245, 293 Memento mori, 128 Menéndez Pidal, Ramón, 113, 200

 INDEX 

Menke, Christoph, 254, 263 Mestizo, 149, 233 Mignolo, Walter, 67, 87, 100, 101 Miller, Marilyn, 233, 250, 250n3, 253, 269, 270 Molloy, Sylvia, 251, 258 Montesinos, Antonio de, 36, 37, 71, 101, 226 Moor, 43, 97, 118, 125, 126 Mulatto, 32n15, 50, 210, 212, 214, 217, 226, 227, 232–236, 238, 239, 241, 242, 266, 270, 291, 297 Muslim, 25, 32, 32n14, 101, 147, 173

307

Orality, oral, 16, 128, 137, 138n19, 152, 155–161, 264, 293 Ortiz, Fernando, 233, 251 Othercide, 38

N Native Americans, 5–7, 12, 14–16, 24, 27–32, 34–36, 39, 41, 43n29, 51, 52, 54, 64, 65, 68, 70, 76, 79n17, 82, 84, 86, 87, 98, 100, 126, 168, 172, 174, 180, 187, 190n32, 197, 200, 213, 236, 238, 240–242, 291, 292, 297 Natural law, Ius naturae, 34, 37, 38, 64, 64n2, 87, 88, 90, 92, 93, 98, 101n51, 195, 297 Natural right, 6, 14, 17, 34, 34n17, 54, 64, 67, 83–95, 209–245, 254, 261, 296, 297 New Laws, see Leyes Nuevas New World, 14n3, 23, 23n1, 24, 26, 33–35, 39, 41, 65, 67, 72, 101, 168, 168n3, 170, 172–175, 185, 186, 191, 197, 222, 296, 297 New World Discovered by Christopher Columbus, The, 16, 167–201 Noble savage, 86

P Pagden, Anthony, 23n1, 32, 71, 72, 89, 92 Perpetrator, 2, 3, 13, 67, 69, 69n5, 74–83, 121–123, 171, 200 Peru, 16, 40, 70, 73, 93, 137, 148, 152, 152n29, 155n34 Philip II, 100 Pizarro, Francisco, 139–141, 141n22, 145–151, 149n27, 149n28, 155, 157–160 Political, 2, 4, 6–10, 12–16, 14n3, 24, 26, 27, 34, 34n17, 35, 42–44, 49–51, 53–55, 64–68, 69n5, 71, 80–82, 84, 87, 89, 92, 94–96, 98–102, 101n51, 111, 113, 116, 118, 126, 131, 138–141, 150, 154, 155, 162, 168, 169, 172, 179, 191, 198, 199, 201, 213, 222, 245, 251–255, 264, 267, 270, 274, 276n22, 277, 284, 290–294, 297 Politics, 7, 13, 16, 17, 31–33, 43, 67, 71, 82, 92, 98, 179, 199, 251, 297 Poma de Ayala, Guamán, 95, 149–153 Pope, 6, 25, 39, 41, 43, 84, 94, 125, 132, 136 Prosecutor, 127, 276 Pufendorf, Samuel, 101, 295n1

O Oedipus, 254 Olney, James, 255, 258

Q Quod omnis tangit debet ab omnibus approbari, 93, 94

308 

INDEX

R Race, 6, 14n3, 32, 53, 55, 217, 221, 222, 225, 233, 241, 242, 292 Racism, 6, 12, 29, 31–33, 55, 100, 101, 222, 294 Repetition, 16, 67, 74, 120, 139, 155–160, 228, 293 Requirimiento, Requirement, 35, 147 Reséndez, Andrés, 30, 30n11, 31, 35 Resistance, 7, 9, 10, 24, 26, 40, 81, 82, 90, 91, 95, 113, 114, 120, 137, 142–148, 152, 154, 155n34, 159–162, 191, 193, 213, 214, 252, 266–268, 270, 273, 283, 295, 297 Revenge, 16, 110–162, 215, 238, 271, 274, 279, 283 Revolution, 5, 28, 38, 38n24, 44n31, 46–48, 222, 239, 243, 273, 295n1 Right, 1–17, 23–55, 64–102, 110–162, 167–201, 209–245, 249–286, 289–298 Ritual, 111, 112, 114, 128, 129, 135, 136, 154 Roche, William, 281, 282 Romance, 171n6, 210, 217 Romantic, 9, 101, 210, 215, 217–223, 242 S Sab/Sab, 16, 50, 209–245, 261, 266, 297 Saco, José Antonio, 27, 30n12, 31, 48–50, 53, 95, 233, 265n16 St. Augustin, 32n16 Satan, 122, 123, 127, 128, 131–133, 136 Schmidt-Nowara, Christopher, 28, 51–54, 69, 96, 98, 100 Schulman, Ivan, 249n1, 251n4, 252, 256n6, 260n13, 264, 266, 267

Schultheis Moore, Alexandra, 13, 168n1, 253 Scott, James Brown, 34, 101, 111 Sensus communis, 131 Sentiment, 17, 171, 211, 215, 222, 225, 232, 242 Sentimentalism, sentimental, 14, 66, 210, 230–234 Sepúlveda, Gines de, 32, 33, 41–43, 41n26, 42n27, 44n30, 72n9, 86, 96, 116, 123, 136, 169, 182 Shannon, Robert M., 168n2, 170, 172, 172n7, 190n32, 191–193, 192n33, 196 Skeleton, 130, 290 Skinner, Quentin, 101n51 Slave trade, 4, 25, 27, 28, 45–49, 53 Sliwinski, Sharon, 80n19 Social romance, 210, 217 Solidarity, 13, 17, 55, 113, 114, 209–245, 253, 286 Sommer, Doris, 210, 232, 233 Sophocles, 282 Soto, Domingo del, 5, 34, 101 Spain, 5, 6, 14n3, 24–28, 26n7, 26n10, 31–44, 44n31, 47–49, 51–53, 55n38, 69, 72n9, 73, 82, 89, 90, 92, 95, 99–101, 110, 112, 126, 134, 139–141, 143, 146, 148–150, 159, 168–170, 172–175, 174n9, 180, 183, 186, 190n32, 197, 210, 251, 266n17, 273, 283, 294–296, 295n1, 298 Spectacle, 10, 66, 125, 128, 129, 190, 200n35, 224 Suárez y Romero, Anselmo, 50, 209n1, 250, 251n4 Sugar industry, 28, 44, 44n31, 45, 47, 213, 251 Sugar plantation, 31, 47, 212, 213, 236, 257, 263, 265, 266, 266n17 Sweeney, Fionnghuala, 250–252, 264, 265

 INDEX 

T Tableau, tableaux, 209–245 Tableau vivant/Tableaux vivants, 16, 17, 211, 219, 244, 245, 293 Thacker, Jonathan, 174n11, 179, 180, 200n35 Theater, 7–9, 12, 75, 110–113, 138n19, 162, 174n11, 179, 182n26, 190, 198, 200n35, 256, 293 Theatricality, theatrical, 1–17, 37, 64–102, 110–162, 167–201, 209–245, 249–286, 289–298 Tierney, Brian, 25, 34, 34n17, 64, 296 Todorov, Tzvetan, 176n14 Toledo, 110n1, 115, 115n6, 116, 152, 176 Tragedia del fin de Atawallpa, 16, 110, 110n4, 111, 137, 138n19, 147, 151, 293 Tragedy, tragic, 16, 17, 50, 111, 114, 115, 123, 129, 130, 137–141, 162, 177, 178, 180, 184, 210–212, 225, 227, 245, 253–255, 259, 261, 263, 269–286 Tragicomedy, tragicomic, 14–16, 167–201, 293 Transubstantiation, 124, 135 Túpac Amaru, 26n8, 152–154, 155n34 U Universalism, universalist, 6, 14n3, 98, 99, 113 V Valladolid, 41, 43, 44, 70, 96, 116, 118 Varela, Consuelo, 40, 49, 73, 99, 110n2, 118 Vega, Lope de, 16, 110n2, 116, 116n8, 167–201, 293, 295 Vernant, Jean Pierre, 254

309

Victim, 1, 11–13, 66, 67, 69, 74–83, 88, 95, 100, 102, 111, 118, 119, 123, 134, 135, 140, 141, 143, 155n34, 162, 171, 200, 216, 231, 238, 239, 244, 253, 254, 260, 269, 277, 289–291, 294 Vilcabamba, Willkapampa, 26n8, 145, 152 Violence, violent, 3, 10–16, 33, 34, 37, 39, 44, 46, 47, 65–67, 69, 73–83, 91, 95, 97, 102, 110, 111, 116, 117, 152, 154, 155n34, 157, 160–162, 169, 170, 176, 181–184, 190, 191, 193, 196–201, 211–214, 224, 226, 232, 238–240, 242, 245, 252, 259, 261, 263, 267, 276, 283, 286, 290, 291, 293, 294, 297 Vitoria, Francisco de, 5, 34, 39, 42, 42n28, 89, 89n31, 101, 182 Vulnerability, vulnerable, 12, 14, 17, 24, 80, 102, 154, 171, 198, 201, 249–286, 293 W Wachtel, Nathan, 112, 114, 138, 138n19, 139, 139n20, 141n22, 145n23 Wanka, 114, 137, 139 War, 4, 25, 27, 34–36, 40, 42, 43, 65, 67, 80, 89, 89n31, 91, 92, 94, 96, 111, 117, 123, 139, 147, 147n26, 150, 154, 161, 175, 180, 181, 191, 192, 251, 253, 271, 280, 282, 289, 297 Weizman, Eyal, 2, 3, 119, 290, 294 Wilberforce, William, 53, 54, 98 Wiraqocha, 146 Z Zafira/Zafira, 17, 50, 249–286 Zupanĉiĉ, Alenka, 186, 188