Mucho ruido y poca Historia en la conquista: el areíto en Fernández de Oviedo

Abstract

"This paper analyzes that the colonial discourse by Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, the Official Chronicler of Indies in the first half of the 16th century, takes in contact with certain pre-Columbian indigenous expressions of the Caribbean and Central America. In particular, we focus on the representations that the chronicler creates about the areíto, or Indian feast, the most indescribable
and incomprehensible manifestation among their practices. I propose that, in presence of the areítos, Oviedo’s colonial discourse becomes brittle and contradictory, plurivalent. Thus, to approach the symbolic level of the Historia General y Natural de las Indias, I utilize a literary-critical perspective together with the help of the study of some information provided by ethnography."