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Even before the arrival of Europeans to the Americas, the practice of taking captives was widespread among Native Americans. Indians took captives for many reasons: to replace--by adoption--tribal members who had been lost in battle, to use as barter for needed material goods, to use as slaves, or to use for reproductive purposes. From the legendary story of John Smith's captivity in the Virginia Colony to the wildly successful narratives of New England colonists taken captive by local Indians, the genre of the captivity narrative is well known among historians and students of early American literature. Not so for Hispanic America. Fernando Operé redresses this oversight, offering the first...
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Padrón reveals the evolution of Spain’s imagining of the New World as a space in continuity with Asia. Narratives of Europe’s westward expansion often tell of how the Americas came to be known as a distinct landmass, separate from Asia and uniquely positioned as new ground ripe for transatlantic colonialism. But this geographic vision of the Americas was not shared by all Europeans. While some imperialists imagined North and Central America as undiscovered land, the Spanish pushed to define the New World as part of a larger and eminently flexible geography that they called las Indias, and that by right, belonged to the Crown of Castile and León. Las Indias included all of the New World...
This remarkable book tells the story of one man's kidnapping in Colombia from the first-person perspectives of all those involved: the guerrillas, the victim, his wife, his friends, and his brother-in-law, Herbert Braun. In this second edition, the author has added a new chapter that recounts the endurance of Colombia and Colombians in the face of escalating kidnapping and violence, explores the current political situation in Colombia, and reevaluates his own complex response to the guerrillas.
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Translated by Jeremy Moyle In Nature in the New World (translated into English in 1985), Antonello Gerbi examines the fascinating reports of the first Europeans to see the Americas. These accounts provided the basis for the images of strange and new flora, fauna, and human creatures that filled European imaginations.Initial chapters are devoted to the writings of Columbus, Vespucci, Cortes, Verrazzano, and others. The second portion of the book concerns the Historia general y natural de las Indias of Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo, a work commissioned by Charles V of Spain in 1532 but not published in its entirety until the 1850s. Antonello Gerbi contends that Oviedo, a Spanish administrator who lived in Santo Domingo, has been unjustly neglected as a historian. Gerbi shows that Oviedo was a major authority on the culture, history, and conquest of the New World.