
The colonial period

When the sails of Christopher Columbus’s ships rose above the horizon on October 12, 1492, the peoples of what the Europeans would call the New World possessed their own forms of artistic verbal expression: from prayers, hymns, and myths to theatre of various kinds. But even the most advanced pre-Columbian civilizations lacked alphabetic writing, so their “literature” was exclusively oral (if one includes various mnemonic ideographs and pictographs), kept by the memory of individuals entrusted with that task and by the collectivity. A substantial number of these oral narratives were preserved, thanks to the efforts of friars, priests, and chroniclers as well as native historians who learned to read and write, and the narratives’ themes, characters, topics, and even metaphors have been periodically adopted by Latin American literature. In the latter half of the 20th century, much work was done to recover and study pre-Columbian literature, including that part of it created in the aftermath of the European invasion.

The first European poetry to be heard in the New World was most surely the ballads sung by Columbus’s sailors in their settlements on the island of Hispaniola (now comprising the states of Haiti and the Dominican Republic). These romances (narrative poems with eight-syllable lines), which harkened back to the Middle Ages, continued to be composed and sung in all areas where the Spaniards settled. More sophisticated poetry, following Italian Renaissance metres and themes, began to be written shortly thereafter in the capitals of the viceroyalties (or vice-kingdoms) of Mexico and Peru. These cities became the centres of European culture in America. The viceroyalty comprising what is today roughly Mexico, parts of the southwestern United States, and Central America was called the Viceroyalty of Nueva España (New Spain), and the one centred in Peru was the Viceroyalty of Peru. Because the viceregal capitals were organized like European courts, literary activity thrived there throughout the colonial period. There were poetic contests, theatre, public recitations, and literary gatherings like those of the academies and universities of Europe. With the development of the printing press in the 15th century, the Spanish empire depended more and more on the written word. Writing in all areas, particularly in law and religious doctrine, became paramount in the empire’s daily life. The creation of a native elite, able to write and imbued with Western culture, was crucial to the empire’s functioning, so colleges and universities were founded: a college in Mexico in 1536 and a university in 1551, a university in 1538 in Hispaniola, and a university in Lima in 1551. For learning purposes, large numbers of cartillas, or alphabet cards, were shipped from Spain.

The earliest literary activity

Although there must have been some early stirrings in Hispaniola, literary activity in the Western sense (that is, written forms that had a conscious literary purpose and employed an alphabetic language) began with the Hispanicization of Mexico City. The former Aztec capital was already a major metropolis when the Spaniards took over, and they strove earnestly to compete with the institutions of the vanquished, particularly in religion but also in theatre, poetry, and all forms of oral literature. Mexico City soon became a cultural centre, with poets, many of them born in Spain, who were attuned to every trend back in Europe. Poets already recognized in Spain, such as the Sevillian Gutierre de Cetina and Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, lived in Mexico, as did Spanish-born prose writers such as the famous author of picaresque novels Mateo Alemán. The first Mexican-born poet to attain renown was Francisco de Terrazas, who composed fine sonnets in the Petrarchan style, probably during the last half of the 16th century.

The most distinguished composition to issue from these endeavours was Grandeza mexicana (1604; “Mexican Greatness” or “The Magnificence of Mexico City”), a long poem in praise of Mexico City by Bernardo de Balbuena. A highly elaborate piece, Balbuena’s poem celebrates Mexico City as the crossroads of all worlds, a global centre through which flowed goods coming from Spain’s Asian imperial outpost in the Philippines (and brought to Mexico’s Pacific shores by the Manila Galleon) on their way to Veracruz, where they were picked up by the fleets that would take them, via Havana, to Seville, Spain. Focusing on the economic richness brought about by so much trade, Balbuena exults in the beauty of the city’s horses, monuments, markets, fruit, and pageants.

The epic form proved to be the most important manifestation of Renaissance-style poetry in the first century of the colonial period. More specifically, these were poems written in the manner of Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando furioso and Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata. The best of all the epics written about the conquest of the New World was by far Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga’s La Araucana (1569–89; The Araucaniad). The young soldier and courtier began the poem while engaged in campaigns against the Araucanian Indians of what is today Chile. While the poem has been praised for the authenticity lent by the fact that the poet was a participant in the wars he describes, and also for the very positive portrayal of the Araucanians, its deepest value lies in the poetic genius Ercilla brought to it. He was a powerful and refined poet, the supreme master of the eight-line octava real stanza in the Spanish language, and he had a great sense of the dramatic. Praised by Miguel de Cervantes in Don Quixote, Ercilla is considered a major writer in both the Spanish and Latin American canons.

Pedro de Oña’s Arauco domado (1596; Arauco Tamed) was a worthy successor on the same theme, though it is both rhetorical and derivative. Oña, a native of the region, is named in conventional histories of literature as the first great Chilean poet. He has never achieved the popularity of Ercilla, however.

A Caribbean example of this epic tradition is Espejo de paciencia (1608; “Model of Patience”). Written in Cuba by the Canarian Silvestre de Balboa y Troya de Quesada, it is about the defeat of a French pirate who abducts a local ecclesiastic for ransom, and it reflects anti-Protestant fervour in the Spanish empire.

Chronicles of discovery and conquest

Yet what has been commonly considered, retrospectively, the most important 16th-century writing in the Americas is the chronicles of the discovery and conquest of the New World. This group of documents includes narrative accounts, legal documents (depositions, reports, arguments, etc.), and full-fledged histories. Because of their foundational aura, the most celebrated of the texts are Columbus’s letters and reports to the Catholic Monarchs and their functionaries. There is an added charm in Columbus’s awkwardness of style (Spanish was not his native tongue), his difficulties in describing objects unknown to Europeans, and his huge mistakes. In spite of these often attractive flaws, his accounts constitute a substantial legacy in the discourse of the West. The most egregious of Columbus’s errors was, of course, his belief that he had arrived somewhere in Asia, which led to his adopting the name “Indies” for the lands he “discovered.” Hence the misnomer “Indians” for all the natives of the American continent.

Columbus’s letters and reports were quickly disseminated in the original and in Latin translations. Using these and other early accounts, the Italian humanist Peter Martyr d’Anghiera wrote, during the last years of the 15th and early years of the 16th century, the first history of the New World: De Orbe Novo decades (1516; De Orbe Novo: The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr d’Anghiera). Whereas Columbus was a navigator who could write a little, Peter Martyr was steeped in culture; during the 16th century his elegant Latin tract enjoyed a wide readership all over Europe.

While the discovery of the Caribbean was an astonishing event to Europeans, the discovery of Mexico was dazzling. Here were hitherto unknown civilizations that not only were populous and spread over vast territories but also had splendid cities and complex forms of government, arts, crafts, and religious practices. Knowledge of the conquest of Mexico was provided by its Spanish protagonist Hernán Cortés, whose Cartas de relación (1519–26; Letters from Mexico) told of the tortuous campaign by which a few hundred Spaniards took over the powerful Aztec empire, aided by gunpowder, horses, cunning, and the resentful peoples who were subject to Aztec rule. Cortés was a vigorous writer, with a flair for the dramatic and an eye for the kind of details that would captivate the European reader. He described battles but also customs, costumes, rituals, and the elaborate protocol of the Aztec court. Cortés was a master at self-dramatization and self-promotion. His haughty attitude provoked one of his soldiers, Bernal Díaz del Castillo, to write a prolix account of the conquest 50 years after the event. He wanted to give the common soldier’s perspective. Díaz del Castillo’s prodigious memory allowed him to recall vividly many of his companions, down to the names and colours of their horses. The Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España (1632; The True History of the Conquest of Mexico) is a monumental volume written by a man who claimed to have little formal education, which may explain the book’s particular immediacy and charm. It is an invaluable source of information on both the common lives of the soldiers and the customs of the natives they defeated. Most memorable is Díaz del Castillo’s description of the astonishment Spaniards felt at the sight of Mexico City, which he likens to the marvels found in the romances of chivalry. While not literary in the formal sense of Renaissance poetics, the Historia verdadera is literature in a modern sense in that it places authenticity above all rules of style or decorum. Nothing escapes the author’s gaze; no detail is too insignificant or even repulsive. Of all the books to have come out of colonial Latin America, his is the one still most read.

But no book coming from the Spanish dominions attained a wider readership at the time than Bartolomé de Las Casas’s Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (1542; A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies). Originally a Spanish settler, Las Casas was appalled at the treatment of the Indians by the rapacious Spaniards. He became a Dominican friar, steeped himself in the law, and began to write bitter denunciations of the conquistadors’ actions; these he directed to the Spanish crown, whom he considered innocently unaware of what was being perpetrated in the monarch’s name. In 1526 Las Casas also commenced the Historia de las Indias (selections appear in History of the Indies), a voluminous history of the conquest of the New World. It was not published in his lifetime, but Las Casas did publish a summary, the Brevísima relación, as a polemic, hoping that it would have an immediate and telling impact. It did, probably beyond his expectations. Las Casas’s accusations were a factor in the issuance of the “New Laws” that went some way toward ending hereditary Spanish grants of land and Indians, thus limiting the Spaniards’ use of natives for labour. His little book took on a life of its own abroad, being translated into several European languages and used by Spain’s enemies to elaborate what has come to be known as the “Black Legend,” a lurid account of what occurred to the Indians at the hands of the Spaniards. Brevísima relación became, in short, part of the religious polemics and wars between Spain and countries under the sway of the Protestant Reformation. Written in a dramatic style and perhaps exaggerating the atrocities perpetrated on the Indians, it was both a polemic and an appeal. Las Casas is known as “the Apostle of the Indians” and is revered in Latin America. He remained a controversial figure in Spain until the 20th century.

Historians of the New World

By the turn of the 17th century, most of the conquest of America had been accomplished, and historians, some appointed by the Spanish crown, attempted to provide a comprehensive overview of the event. Whereas at first chroniclers had prevailed—some of whom, such as Columbus and Cortés, had been protagonists—now the historians took over. Other than Las Casas, Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo and official court historian Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas continued the work that Peter Martyr had begun. The most significant among these new writers, however, was Garcilaso de la Vega, El Inca, the son of a Spanish conquistador and an Inca woman of noble lineage. Because of his combined heritage, Garcilaso, who was born in Peru but spent most of his adult life in Spain, is commonly considered to be the first truly Latin American writer. His masterpiece is Los comentarios reales de los Incas (1609, 1617; Royal Commentaries of the Incas, with a foreword by Arnold J. Toynbee), whose second part is called Historia general del Perú (General History of Peru).

The Comentarios reales tells the history of the Inca empire, providing a detailed description of all aspects of Inca culture. It is also the story of Garcilaso’s maternal family, based on his own recollections of what his relatives told him and on the oral and written testimony of others. Garcilaso’s avowed purpose is to correct the Spanish histories of the conquest of the Andes (hence the title “commentaries”), which were written by men who did not even know the Quechuan languages spoken by the natives of Peru. He gives a dramatic account that combines autobiography, ethnography, and history, all cast in an elegant and precise prose style. The Historia general del Perú relates the tale of the Spanish conquest and the civil wars among the Spanish, in which Garcilaso’s father played a prominent, though controversial, role (he was accused of aiding those rebelling against the crown). It is the story of Garcilaso’s paternal family, told in excruciating detail for it was intended to clear his father’s name before the Spanish authorities.

Garcilaso is the most prominent of the native historians of the conquest because his book is of such a high literary quality and also because of his mixed heritage. In the 20th century his fellow Peruvian Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala was also intensively studied. Guamán Poma’s lengthy and wide-ranging El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno (1612–15; “The First New Chronicle and Good Government,” translated in abridgment as Letter to a King) is written in a very faulty Spanish, laced with Quechua words and troubled by Quechuan syntax, which gives his work an authentic and dramatic tone. The book is illustrated with Guamán Poma’s primitive but trenchant full-page drawings of the events he narrates. Its author accuses the Spaniards of not abiding by their own Christian doctrine, which he himself has adopted, and demands the restoration of native leaders to local rule. The Primer nueva corónica is a laboriously told history that includes lore and descriptions of native customs and practices. Guamán Poma did not have much impact on Latin American literature and historiography because his manuscript was not discovered and published until the 20th century.

While historians were interpreting the events of the conquest and debating their consequences, literary life in the Spanish empire continued unabated. Renaissance poetry, as well as other cultural manifestations, soon evolved into Baroque forms, particularly in the viceroyalties of Mexico and Peru. A distinctive kind of Baroque art developed in colonial Latin America, a style that has come to be known as the Barroco de Indias, or “Baroque of the Indies,” arguably the first authentic artistic style to emerge in the region.

The Barroco de Indias

In poetry, the Barroco de Indias begins with a gleeful acceptance of the manner originated by Luis de Góngora y Argote, the great Spanish Baroque poet, who had brought about a veritable revolution in poetic language. Góngora’s poetry is difficult, laden with mythological allusions, bristling with daring metaphors that strain the limits of the language, and syntactically complex. He soon had numerous and ardent praisers and detractors in Spain and the viceroyalties. Among the poets, whatever their status, he was mostly admired and imitated. In fact, gongorismo is practically a whole poetic movement in colonial Latin America, affecting poetry through the 17th century and well into the 18th.

Baroque poetry is known for its vicious satires. Góngora, for example, delighted in heaping invective on his literary rivals. Viceregal courts outdid the Spanish court in pomposity, constantly providing ample targets for their poets to exercise satirical wit. Whereas Balbuena’s Grandeza mexicana (1604) praised Mexico City, Mateo Rosas de Oquendo’s Sátira hecha por Mateo Rosas de Oquendo a las cosas que pasan en el Pirú año de 1598 (1598; “Satire Written by Mateo Rosas de Oquendo About Things Happening in Peru in the Year 1598”) satirized Peru. The Spanish-born wanderer lived for some time in Tucuman and Lima, where he turned a caustic eye on colonial society. Lima itself, profiting from silver mines in Potosí, now had literary academies, luxurious goods, and various forbidden pleasures, all of which called forth an elaborate invective from Rosas de Oquendo. He was surpassed in his criticism of colonial doings, however, by Juan del Valle y Caviedes, a shopkeeper who was also Spanish-born. Caviedes, the best-known satirical poet of the Barroco de Indias, focused on the frailties of the human body, to the extent that some readers believed him to be syphilitic as well as misanthropic. His most important work was Diente del Parnaso (“The Tooth of Parnassus”), a collection of 47 poems not published until 1873. These are given over to ridiculing the hapless doctors of Lima, who killed more often than they cured. Caviedes, as did other poets of the Barroco de Indias, found the scholastic “science” of the time lacking and showed a modern impatience with its crude methods of observation and reliance on received authority.

Probably the best practitioner of Gongorist poetry in colonial Latin America was Hernando Domínguez Camargo, a Jesuit born in Bogotá. Domínguez Camargo wrote a voluminous epic, Poema heroico de San Ignacio de Loyola (1666; “Heroic Poem in Praise of St. Ignatius Loyola”), praising the founder of the Jesuit order, but he is best remembered for a short ballad titled A un salto por donde se despeña el arroyo de Chillo (“To a Waterfall Where the Chillo Brook Crashes”). The said brook is portrayed as a bolting horse that smashes himself against rocks at the bottom of a waterfall, presenting an image of grotesque beauty typical of the Baroque.

The Barroco de Indias peaks in the poetry of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, who has become a canonical figure in Spanish-language literature. Sor Juana’s life was dramatic: she rose to fame from illegitimacy and a precarious childhood. Invited to the viceregal court, she shone there and was later admitted to a convent, where she suffered a saintly death while assisting the victims of an epidemic. Despite all misguided efforts to make her a heretic, Sor Juana was a pious Catholic nun. As a writer, she was versatile, putting forth poetry, prose, and plays. Her extended philosophical poem Primero sueño (1692; “First Dream,” Eng. trans. Sor Juana’s Dream) ranked alongside Góngora’s Soledades in the breadth and depth of its aspirations. The Respuesta a Sor Filotea (written 1691; “Answer to Sor Filotea,” included in Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Poems, 1985) is an early instance of feminism in its argument that women should be permitted to have intellectual interests. Sor Juana’s love sonnets manage to be at the same time playful and profound. Her secular and religious plays are well-crafted. Along with Garcilaso de la Vega, but surpassing his literary accomplishments in both quality and quantity, Sor Juana stands at the apex of colonial letters. Her modern perspectives foreshadow the work of the 18th century and beyond.