The shapes of clay: the significations of the aboriginal in the discourse of the Spanish conquest of the Americas and its contemporary implications

Abstract

This article examines how the narrative discourse of the Spanish conquest over the Americas signifies the American aborigine from bon sauvage to fierce barbarian. Cemented in the corner stone works of Beatriz Pastor, Stephanie Merrim, Walter Mignolo, among others, a semantic analysis of the discourse of the first Spanish conquest narratives is performed to identify its signs in concatenation with the historical and pragmatic context of its production. From Cristopher Columbus to Alonso Ercilla y Zúñiga, the narrative discourse of the Spanish Conquest shapes the aborigine like clay–noble inhabitant of the locus amoenus or cannibal; mythic monster or civilized infidel; or the mirror of western barbarity–revealing its authors’ ideology and ulterior motives. Moreover, the article reviews how these significations are reproduced or appropriated throughout modernity and the twentieth century.