Ambivalence Mimicry and Stereotype in Fe

8/16/2019 Ambivalence Mimicry and Stereotype in Fe

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● 143

Ambivalence, Mimicry, andStereotype in Fernández

de Oviedo’s Historia general

y natural de las Indias

Colonial Discourse and the Caribbean Areíto

G A L E N B R O K A W

State University of New York at Buffalo

The conquest of America consists of a series of violent and

elaborate ceremonies of possession. Along with the obvious physical pres-

ence of the Europeans, these ceremonies inevitably involve discourses. In

“Taking Possession and Reading Texts: Establishing the Authority of

Overseas Empires,” Patricia Seed explains that after marking physical pres-ence on the land, “[t]he second part of the Roman-derived concept of pos-

session was manifesting intent to remain, which Columbus did, in his son’s

report, by ‘appropriate ceremony and words’” (1993, 112). Later, the Crown

derived its authority to impose rule over the Amerindian societies from the

papal bull of 1493. The requerimiento, a judicial document that advised the

Indians of their new religious and political obligations and gave them the

option of accepting Christianity or being conquered, was required readingby the conquistadors before taking any action (a fifteenth-century proce-

dural equivalent of the Miranda rights). In theory, the reaction of the Indians

determined what kind of action would be taken, military or administrative.


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If discourse provided the initial procedure and justification for conquest, it

also played an important role in the ongoing colonial attempt to apprehend

and assimilate the newness of the Americas. Conquistador and historian

alike expressed their experiences and observations through historiographi-

cal discourses in letters, chronicles, and histories. The analogous nature of

this textual enterprise to the physical conquest has led scholars to label it the

“intellectual conquest” and those who participated in it, “intellectual con-

quistadors” (Brading 1991, 32; Merrim 1989, 165).

The contact between the two continents might be termed a “dialogue,”

for both Europe and America affected the other, however lopsided the

influence may have been. However, this dialogue was of a peculiar nature.

The Europeans were active agents, attempting to interpret and understand

what they saw as a “New World.” Indigenous Americans were certainly

capable of representing themselves, and they did so in many ways; but

European perception was often blind to indigenous modes of representa-

tion.1 From the European viewpoint, therefore, the Indians played a passive

role: the continent was made to speak by the European chroniclers. In NewWorlds, Ancient Texts, Anthony Grafton explains that European knowledge

was based not on empirical observation but rather authoritative texts: “the

Bible, the philosophical, historical, and literary works of the Greeks and

Romans; and a few modern works of unusually high authority” (1992, 2).

Europeans approached the New World from an established, rigid Old

World perspective attempting to fit the round peg of America into the

square hole of Western European knowledge. As Edmundo O’Gormanpoints out in The Invention of America (1961), in many ways America was

invented by Europe rather than discovered. That is to say that most of the

new information about America and the world was not recognized as gen-

uinely new but rather made to fit into old paradigms. This process, although

perhaps overtly dialogical, is inherently colonial. Of course, the European

paradigm was increasingly modified, but only when forced by irrefutable

fact, and even then vestiges of the old tenaciously clung to and subvertedthe new. The New World never escaped from this Old World colonial

influence, which has shaped, in many ways, the nature of modern America

and almost totally determined how the West perceives it.

A m b i v a l e n c e , M i m i c r y , a n d S t e r e o t y p e144 ●


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Although this colonial insertion of America into established Western

systems has had lasting effects, it was impossible to maintain the old ideas

completely. Many scholars have shown how the sixteenth century was a

time of change in academic knowledge and method. It is difficult to quan-

tify precisely the effect that the encounter between the Americas and

Europe had on the West or to separate this event from other factors that

influenced change both before and after 1492. Only from a distance was

the Old World able to ignore the incredible difference encountered in

America and incorporate it into the system established by Western author-

ities. As J. H. Elliot explains in The Old World and the New (1992), the

Atlantic Ocean functioned as a comfortable buffer that served to “blunt”

the impact of America on Europe. However, writers who actually traveled

to the New World initially reacted with awe and amazement. In Marvelous

Possessions, Stephen Greenblatt, commenting on the philosophies of

Spinoza and Descartes, observes that “[t]he object that arouses wonder is

so new that for a moment at least it is alone, unsystematized, an utterly

detached object of rapt attention. . . . The expression of wonder stands forall that cannot be understood, that can scarcely be believed. It calls atten-

tion to the problem of credibility and at the same time insists upon the

undeniability, the exigency of the experience” (1991, 20). Because the first

European travelers to the Americas were unable to understand the mar-

velous new and incorporate it into their mental paradigm, they also found

it very difficult to express it verbally. We must remember that the dis-

course used to describe and narrate American reality did not appear fromthin air, tailored to the task. Quite the contrary, it came from a long

Western tradition and was arguably incapable of serving as an effective

communicative tool of the New World. Rhetorical devices and literary

techniques, from the inexpressibility topoi used by Columbus, Bartolomé

de Las Casas, Bernal Díaz, and other chroniclers of the New World, 2 to the

marvelous real and magic realism of Alejo Carpentier, Gabriel García

Marquéz, and other writers of the twentieth century, all attest to theincompatibility of Western discourse and American reality.3 Nevertheless,

early modern discourse was the only tool available, the application of

which left neither America nor Europe unscathed.

G a l e n B r o k a w ● 145


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Writers who traveled to the New World, although still inevitably

influenced to a great extent by the old, were compelled by their experience

to deviate from established authorities. At first, even when the New World

chroniclers recognized difference, they were reluctant to contradict the

canon blatantly and continued to adapt and make compatible the new and

the old. It was impossible for them to abandon their intellectual tradition,

but it was equally difficult to ignore the difference that America repre-

sented. Their own personal experience refuted many of the ancient author-

ities. Anthony Pagden explains that “[u]ntil the second half of the

seventeenth century, all attempts to represent America and its peoples con-

stitute, at some level, an attempt to resolve this tension between an appeal

to authorial experience and the demands of the canon” (1993, 56). Nowhere

is this tension more evident than in Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo’s

Historia general y natural de las Indias.

Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo was the royal Spanish historian of the

Indies in the first half of the sixteenth century. Although he traveled to

Central America, he spent most of his time in the New World on the islandof Hispaniola, present day Dominican Republic. He produced the monu-

mental Historia general y natural de las Indias throughout many years of writ-

ing and revision. Oviedo bases his text on his own firsthand experience, the

accounts of other Spaniards in the Americas, and ancient textual authori-

ties. Although the genre of Oviedo’s work is labeled “history,” its descrip-

tion of indigenous culture and society has led some to identify it as nascent

ethnography. Oviedo attempts to represent America through the Europeanhistoriographical tradition, which included the narration of events and the

description of nature and society. As many critics have observed, the prob-

lem facing Oviedo and other early colonial writers was how to represent

the newness of American nature and culture for Europeans who had never

experienced it, or as José Rabasa argues, how to “suggest the old when all

there is to describe is the new” (1993, 54). Edmundo O’Gorman states in the

prologue to his edition of Sucesos y diálogo de la Nueva España that Oviedo isone of the first New World writers to perceive a new meaning in America

(1946, xv). The “power of tradition” still exercises a great deal of influence,

but Oviedo balks at the textual restraints that he begins to see as irrelevant



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and obsolete. From the first pages of the Historia, Oviedo explains that he

will imitate Pliny (1992, 13). Also from the beginning, however, he points

out Pliny’s errors and how their works differ because of the nature of the

subject matter: Pliny writes of the Old World; Oviedo confronts the New.

When Oviedo writes of things never before heard of or seen, he is ventur-

ing into methodologically unstable territory because he has no textual sup-

port. When it happens that old and new appear to coincide, tradition

compels Oviedo to cite Pliny as an authority, but he also subverts the

authority of ancient texts by relying on his own observation and personal

experiences to justify the portions of his text for which he cannot provide

authoritative support.

One of the best examples of this methodological ambivalence occurs in

chapter 5, book 6 of the first volume of the Historia. Oviedo explains how

the Indians start fires by rubbing sticks together. He cites Pliny and Vitrubio

as support for his description:

Quien hobiere leído, no se maravillará destos secretos, porque muchos del-

los hallarán escriptos, o sus semejantes. Esto, a lo menos, del sacar fuego de

los palos, pónelo Plinio en su Natural Historia. . . . Dice Vitrubio que los

árboles por tempestad derribados, e entre si mismo fregándose los ramos,

excitaron el fuego e levantaron llamas. . . .

[Whosoever has read, will not marvel at these secrets, because many of

them are found written, or their semblances. This, at least, about makingfire from sticks, Pliny includes in his Natural History. . . . Vitrubio says that

the trees knocked over by storms, and whose branches rub together, created

fire and raised flames. . . .] (i, 150–51)

Oviedo’s phrase “a lo menos” [at least] implies at once relief that in this

case his text can comply with traditional scholarship and regret that he can

provide no authority for other elements of his text. Immediately, however,in a moment of textual schizophrenia, Oviedo undermines his own tradi-

tional methodology:



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Mas, ¿para qué quiero yo traer auctoridades de los antinguos en las cosas

que he visto, ni en las que Natura enseña a todos y se ven cada día?”

[But, why do I want to bring in ancient authorities in things that I have seen,

or in those that Nature teaches to everyone and are seen every day?] (i, 151)

He then goes on to give an example of how everyone can learn through

observation that the rubbing together of sticks can produce fire. These pas-

sages from the Historia dramatically illustrate the conflict between ancient

textual authority and eyewitness experience. Oviedo feels compelled to cite

traditional texts to lend authority to his own, but at the same time and for

the same reason, he undermines their authority and replaces it with obser-

vation and personal experience. The eyewitness testimony of personal

experience invests Oviedo with the power, the justification, and, indeed,

the responsibility to deviate, refute, and contradict the old and to set him-

self up as a new authority imparting new knowledge. In her study of

Oviedo’s Sumario, Stephanie Merrim identifies a similar process of self authorization at work (1989, 190). Oviedo’s project, then, is to document

the new meaning he sees in the New World, to appropriate it, to give it

form, and ultimately, to comprehend it.

Oviedo’s comparatively enlightened status, however, does not free him

from the limitations of Western discourse. Europeans were unable to under-

stand America without the aid of Western paradigms, which blinded them to

authentic American self-representation. The European chroniclers gaveAmerica a voice and made it speak, but the New World said different things

to different individuals. The representation of culture is always an interpre-

tive act. Michel de Certeau (1988) explains that “comprehension is tanta-

mount to analyzing the raw data,” and this act of comprehension is

determined by “the combination of a social place, ‘scientific’ practices, and

writing ” (57). These three elements vary not only between cultures and time

periods but also between individuals within the same culture and time period.As might be expected, then, the descriptions written by the chroniclers of

America vary to some extent from one text to the next, but they all share dom-

inant, colonial European perspectives that structure their discourse.



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The textual, linguistic enterprise of this intellectual conquest has a for-

mal, rhetorical dimension that dramatizes and lays bare the colonial nature

not only of Oviedo’s text but also of language in general. The early colonial

discourse of explorers, conquistadors, and historians deals with the prob-

lem of representing or semiotically conquering the new in various ways.

Elsewhere I identify what I call “strategies of avoidance” that rely upon

rhetorical topoi to avoid substantive representation of New World nature.

The representation of cultural phenomena, however, is more complicated

and leads to more sophisticated solutions in colonial texts. In The Writing of

History, Michel de Certeau (1988) argues that historiographic and ethno-

graphic discourse reveals as much, or more, about the representer as it does

about the represented. This ambivalence of colonial discourse, caught

between representation of the other and representation of the self, involves

a series of complex discursive strategies carried out within the text. Oviedo’s

representation of the indigenous areíto exhibits this ambivalence and relates

directly to what Homi Bhabha calls “colonial mimicry”: “the desire for a

reformed, recognizable Other, as a subject of difference that is almost the same,but not quite” (1994, 86, emphasis in original). Bhabha explains that “[t]he

authority of that mode of colonial discourse . . . called mimicry is . . . stricken

by an indeterminacy: mimicry emerges as the representation of a difference

that is itself a process of disavowal” (86). Oviedo’s text achieves this mim-

icry through a series of discursive operations that fall within two general

processes: (1) the establishment of a relationship of resemblance or analogy

between indigenous and European cultural phenomena based on a per-ceived cultural common denominator; and (2) the supplementation of this

common denominator with Spanish referents that then displace the unique

cultural significance of the indigenous signs.

In the first chapter of the fifth book of the Historia, Oviedo explains that

he has very carefully inquired into and studied the ways in which indige-

nous American societies maintained records of their past. On the island of

Hispaniola, he identifies the indigenous tradition known as the areíto as themeans by which knowledge is passed down from generation to generation

(1992, 125). Oviedo introduces the areíto by briefly explaining its function

and the activities that constitute its performance:



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Tenian estas gentes una buena e gentil manera de memorar las cosas pasadas

e antiguas; y esto era en sus cantares e bailes, que ellos llaman areito, que es

lo mismo que nosotros llamamos bailar cantando. . . . El cual areito hacían

desta manera: . . . tomábanse de las manos . . . e uno dellos tomaba el oficio

de guiar (ora fuese hombre o mujer), y aquél daba ciertos pasos adelante e

atrás, a manera de un contrapás muy ordenado, e lo mismo, y en el instante,

hacen todos, e así andan en torno, cantando en aquel tono alto o bajo que la

guía los entona, e como lo hace e dice, muy medida e concertada la cuenta

de los pasos con los versos o palabras que cantan.

[These people had a good and noble manner of remembering things past

and ancient; and this was with their songs and dances, which they callareíto,

which is the same thing that we call singing dance. . . . They performed this

areíto in the following way: . . . they took each other’s hands . . . and one of

them played the part of guide (whether woman or man), and that person

took certain steps forward and backward, like a very orderly contrapás, and

immediately following everyone else does the same, and in this way they

took turns, singing in a high or low tone according to what the guide

intones, and according to what he does and says, very measured and coor-

dinated the step count with the verses or words that they sing.] (i, 113)

In this brief introduction, the relationship between the Taíno and Spanish

signifiers and cultural traditions—areíto on the one hand and romance, can-

tar, baile, and contrapás on the other—already reveals the ambivalence thatappears throughout Oviedo’s treatment of indigenous culture. Oviedo

asserts equivalence while at the same carefully documenting the cultural

difference of the Caribbean practice.

One of the premises upon which I base my discussion of Oviedo’s rep-

resentation is that no matter what common human roots dance and song

may have, there was a drastic difference between the Spanish and indige-

nous Caribbean versions of these cultural phenomena. I would argue fur-ther that difference dominated the entire relationship between Spanish and

American culture. This difference troubles the discourse of Oviedo’s text, a

difference that compels him to use indigenous terms extensively. If there



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were no cultural contrast between an areíto and a cantar or baile, there

would have been no need to use the indigenous term; a simple translation

would have sufficed. Instead, he consistently and ambivalently employs

both terms to refer to both traditions in an attempt to create a recognizable

other through the reconciliation of Taíno cultural practices, the closest

European equivalents, and the linguistic signs used to denote them.

Oviedo’s use of the Spanish signifiers cantar and baile to describe the

areíto indicates a perceived relationship of resemblance between Old and

New World cultural traditions based on the common denominators of song

and dance. Foucault explains in The Order of Things (1994) that “[u]p to the

end of the sixteenth century, resemblance played a constructive role in the

knowledge of Western culture . . . it was resemblance that organized the

play of symbols, made possible knowledge of things visible and invisible,

and controlled the art of representing them” (17). Foucault identifies four

different types of resemblance that he labels “similitudes:” (1) convenientia;

(2) aemulatio; (3) analogy; and (4) sympathy (17–25). The similitude of con-

venientia connotes adjacency, overlapping, and juxtaposition: “[t]hosethings are ‘convenient’ which come sufficiently close to one another to be

in juxtaposition; their edges touch, their fringes mingle, the extremity of

the one also denotes the beginning of the other” (18). The significance of

the areíto to the indigenous Caribbean culture was hardly the same as that

of the cantar and baile to the Spaniards, but the superficial, generalized and

common element of song and dance provides Oviedo with the contiguity

required by convenientia to establish and justify resemblance.The text further emphasizes the asserted equivalence of the areíto and

European customs by identifying a relationship implicitly based on aemu-

latio. The similitude of aemulatio is “a sort of ‘convenience’ that has been

freed from the law of place and is able to function, without motion, from a

distance” (Foucault 1994, 19). Oviedo’s description of the areíto implies

such an emulative relationship with European cultural practices:

Esta manera de baile paresce algo a los cantares e danzas de los labradores,

quando en algunas partes de España, en verano con los panderos, hombres

y mujeres se solazan. Y en Flandes he yo visto lo [sic] mesma forma de



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cantar, bailando hombres y mugeres en muchos corros, respondiendo a uno

que los guia o se anticipa en el cantar, segund es dicho.

[This manner of dance is somewhat similar to the songs and dances of work-

ers, when in some parts of Spain in the summer men and women make

merry with tambourines; and in Flanders I have seen the same manner of

singing, with men and women dancing, responding to one who guides them

or who leads the song, as they say.] (i, 114)

Although the phrase “paresce algo a” qualifies the similarity by implying a

degree of difference, the text immediately makes an unqualified statement

equating the two customs. The text goes on to explain how the songs of the

areíto constitute a record of the past. Oviedo then establishes another

equivalence, this one with the Spanish romance:

No le parezca al letor que esto que es dicho es mucha salvajez, pues que en

España e Italia se usa lo mismo, y en las mas partes de los cristianos, e aún

infieles, pienso yo que debe ser assi. ¿Qué otra cosa son los romançes e

cançiones que se fundan sobre verdades, sino parte e acuerdo de las histo-

rias passadas?

[Let it not seem to the reader that this which is told is much savagery, for in

Spain and Italy the same is done, and in most parts among Christians and even

infidels, I think it must be thus. What other thing are the romances and songsthat are founded upon truths but part and parcel of past histories?] (i, 114)

The text repeatedly insists on the equivalence of the areíto and the Spanish

romance, but the ethnographic description of this indigenous tradition and

the persistent use of the indigenous term itself maintain an ambivalent dif-

ference that is characteristic of colonial mimicry, a discourse “constructed

around an ambivalence . . . [that] must continually produce its slippage, itsexcess, its difference” (Bhabha 1994, 86; emphasis in original). Oviedo’s

treatment of the areíto and other indigenous concepts portrays Amerindian

customs as culturally equivalent to those of Spain, but the discursive

processes that establish relationships of similitude undermine this claim.



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These relationships of similitude lead to the juxtaposition and then sub-

stitution of Spanish and indigenous signifiers and referents. At the begin-

ning of the chapter on the areíto, Oviedo identifies his subject as “sus

cantares” [their songs] adding an aside that provides the indigenous term:

“que ellos llaman areitos” [which they call areítos] (I, 112). When he begins

his discussion of the indigenous custom, Oviedo inverts this order:

“Pasemos a los areitos o cantares suyos” [Let us pass to the areítos or songs]

(I, 113). Here he combines the two terms with the indigenous signifier in the

first position and the Spanish term as an aside. Immediately thereafter, he

inverts the order again: “sus cantares e bailes, que ellos llaman areito” [their

songs and dances, which they call areíto] (I, 113). Further on, in the same

paragraph, he once again changes the order: “areitos o cantares en corro

destos indios” In the next paragraph, Oviedo uses the Spanish cantar twice

by itself to refer to the areíto, and once again in the following paragraph.

Thus, the Spanish term completely displaces the indigenous signifier, albeit

briefly, and appropriates its referent. Cantar here becomes areíto.

Later, the text establishes an analogical relationship between the areítoand the Spanish romance or ballad, and the exact same process occurs but in

reverse: in this case the indigenous term appropriates the Spanish referent.

Speaking of a specific romance, Oviedo writes:

Así lo dice un romançe, y en la verdad así fue ello: que desde Sevilla partió

el Rey don Alonso Onçeno, quando la ganó, a veynte e ocho de marzo, año

de mill e trescientos e quarenta e quatro años. Así que ha, en este de mill equinientos e quarenta e ocho, doscientos e quatro años que tura este cantar

o areito.

[Thus sayeth a ballad, and in truth thus it was: that from Seville departed

King Alonso XI, when he conquered it on the twenty-eighth of March in the

year one thousand three hundred and forty-four years. Thus there are, in

this year of one thousand five hundred and forty-eight, two hundred andfour years that this song or areíto covers.] (i, 114)

As before, he begins by using both terms with the Spanish signifier occupy-

ing the initial position and the indigenous term as an aside, but here the



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referent is not the areíto but rather the Spanish romance. Next, he inverts

the position of the signifiers while speaking of another romance: “por man-

era que ha bien seiscientos doce años, este de mill e quinientos e quarenta e

siete, que tura este otro areito o cantar en España” [thus there are six hun-

dred and twelve years, this being 1547, that this areíto or ballad in Spain cov-

ers] (I, 115). Here, as before, the terms are inverted with the indigenous

term occupying the initial position and the Spanish term as an aside.

Finally, inverting the pattern established earlier, Oviedo employs the

indigenous term by itself to refer to the Spanish romance:

Así que, cantar o areito es aqueste, que ni en las historias se olvidará tan glo-

riosa jornada para los trofeos y triunfos de César y de sus españoles, ni los

niños e viejos dejarán de cantar semejante areito, quanto el mundo fuere e

turare.

[Thus, this is a song or areíto, that such a glorious expedition for the tro-

phies and triumphs of Caesar and his Spaniards will never be forgotten in

the histories, nor will the children and the old ever cease to sing such areí-

tos for as long as the world lasts.] (i, 115)

At the beginning of this passage, the two signifiers appear together, but

then, incredibly, the indigenous term displaces the Spanish signifier, and by

way of the common denominator of song comes to signify, albeit fleetingly,

the Spanish romance.On the formal level of the text itself, these processes loosen the cultural

rigidity of the Taíno and Spanish signs, creating an indeterminacy that

allows them to swap signifiers and referents. This game of musical

signifiers forms part of a complex process through which Oviedo’s text

transforms resemblance into colonial mimicry. Bhabha’s version of mim-

icry is “the sign of a double articulation; a complex strategy of reform, reg-

ulation and discipline, which ‘appropriates’ the Other as it visualizespower” (1994, 86). Bhabha clarifies this concept by explaining John Locke’s

subtle polysemic use of the term slave: first “as the locus of a legitimate

form of ownership, then as the trope for an intolerable, illegitimate exercise


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of power” (86). The double articulation in Oviedo is not based on the pol-

ysemic use of a signifier as in Locke’s use of the term “slave,” but rather on

the ostensibly polyglot nature of the referent. Rather than dealing with one

signifier and two referents, the text introduces several Spanish terms (can-

tar, baile, and romance) and one indigenous term (areíto), all of which spe-

ciously come to share a single referent. The ambivalent slippage occurs in

the play of difference and similitude between the terms of the two lan-

guages as well as between the indigenous and European referents.

As with any cultural phenomenon, linguistic terms rely on a metonymic

process that relates denoted activities or concepts to connoted cultural

significance. According to Oviedo, the indigenous term areíto and the

Spanish terms cantar, baile, romance, and even historia all share a common

denotation, but the fact that the text requires four Spanish signifiers in its

attempt to convey the meaning of the areíto belies this assertion and sug-

gests that the cultural connotation also differs. The metonymy that con-

nects denotation to connotation is a weak link that colonial discourse

exploits in order to transform resemblance into mimicry through a processof what we might call—adapting Derrida’s term—“supplementation.”

Derrida explains that “what is supplementary is in reality differance, the

operation of differing which at one and the same time both fissures and

retards presence, submitting it simultaneously to primordial division and

delay. . . . The supplementary difference vicariously stands in for presence

due to its primordial self-deficiency” (1973, 88). For Derrida, the prime

example of this phenomenon is writing, which supplements speech by tak-ing its place and pretending to be that which it is not. In Oviedo’s text, this

is precisely what happens with the indigenous and Spanish signifiers and

referents. The signifiers and their explanations in the text explicitly or

implicitly make evident four elements: (1) the denotation of the Spanish

signifiers cantar, baile, romance, and historia; (2) the Spanish cultural con-

notation of the activities and products associated with these terms; (3) the

denotation of the Taíno term areíto; and (4) the Taíno cultural connotationinvoked by the activities and products associated with this term. The estab-

lishment of a resemblance between the areíto and Spanish traditions

reduces these elements to three by equating the indigenous and Spanish



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denotations in a kind of double metonymy:4 the denoted activity with two

different connotations associated with indigenous and European cultures

respectively. But then the European connotation supplements the common

denotation, effectively displacing and deactivating the metonymic connec-

tion to indigenous culture. Thus, Spanish culture vicariously occupies the

space of the indigenous referent in an act of colonial mimicry. Bhabha,

rephrasing Lacan, states that “mimicry is like camouflage, not a harmo-

nization of repression of difference, but a form of resemblance, that differs

from or defends presence by displaying it in part, metonymically” (1994,

90). In Oviedo’s text, indigenous culture is camouflaged through the

metonymic portrayal of song and dance supplemented by Spanish cultural

significance.

This elaborate process results more in repetition of the old than in rep-

resentation of the new. It is not quite the narcissistic reproduction of the

colonial self but rather an ambivalent partial representation, what Bhabha

terms a “metonymy of presence” (1994, 89–90). The indigenous areíto

maintains partial metonymical presence by way of the cultural commondenominator. But this presence is deceptive, because denoted activities of

song and dance are present in both cultures. Thus, on one level there is no

difference between that which mimics and that which is mimicked, but the

processes involved in achieving this mimicry appear inscribed in the text

and implicitly reveal the difference of Caribbean culture.

Michel de Certeau states that “[h]istorical discourse makes a social iden-

tity explicit, not so much in the way it is ‘given’ or held as stable, as in theways it is differentiated from a former period or another society” (1988, 45).

The tension between the different Taíno and Spanish signifiers, areíto versus

baile, cantar, romance, and historia, and the fact that Spanish needs the four

terms to establish the metonymical substance of the indigenous concept

associated with the single word areíto suggest difference to the reader. And,

of course, we have our twenty-first-century perspective that easily infers

that these two customs actually were different. Oviedo’s text attempts todisplace this difference through supplementation in order to construct a

fixed, reformed, recognizable Other desired by colonial mimicry, but in so

doing his text manifests an ambivalence that undermines his conclusions.



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Once Oviedo accomplishes the displacement of Taíno culture, he sets

about displacing cultural elements of other indigenous societies through a

process of stereotyping. In other parts of the text, Oviedo often uses the Taíno

term areíto to refer to what he sees as the equivalent customs of other indige-

nous peoples. In chapter 54 of book 33, Oviedo includes a dialogue between

himself and Juan Cano, a resident of Mexico, an area to which Oviedo never

traveled. In response to a question from Oviedo, Cano briefly explains the

Mexican marriage ceremony. His description includes the term areíto:

. . . e hacían un areito después que habían comido e cenado. . . . En el cual

tiempo de este encerramiento siempre había bailes o areitos, que ellos lla-

man mitote. . . .

[. . . and they performed an areíto after they had eaten and dined. . . . In the

time of this confinement there were always dances and areítos, which they

called mitote. . . .] (iv, 260)

Of course, the dialogue is not a direct transcription of the actual conversa-

tion, and Oviedo is not above putting words into the mouths of his sources.

The dialogue was a rhetorical convention, not a tool of empirical research.

This dialogue does provide us with a Nahuatl signifier, mitote, but the text

equates it with the areíto and makes no cultural distinction between the

two. In this case, the Taíno referent, already displaced by the Spanish, dis-

places the Nahua cultural concept of mitote. Later on in the text, Oviedoagain uses the term areito to refer to a Nicaraguan tradition of song and

dance (IV, 365). By way of the speciously fixed Taíno sign areíto, Oviedo

stereotypes all indigenous American traditions of song and dance, recast-

ing in the image of European culture.

In “La música y los areítos de los indios de Cuba,” Fernando Ortiz (1948)

explains that the term areíto originally had only Antillean significance, but

that as the conquest expanded throughout other parts of America, theSpanish applied it to other indigenous phenomena. The term became so

standardized that it appears even today in the Dictionary of the Royal Spanish

Academy [ Diccionario de la Real Academia Española].5 Donald Thompson



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traces the manifestations of the areíto in several colonial texts and observes

that “to writers seeking order and reason in the New World, locally specific

observations very easily became a part of broad generalizations. As a result

it has been believed, without supporting evidence of any kind, that pre-

cisely the same kind of activity, the areíto, was practiced throughout the

entire region” (1993, 187). In the case of Europeans, the problem we are

dealing with here is not merely textual but also cognitive. We might amend

Thompson’s statement to read “ Anyone seeking order and reason,” for even

though we only have access to the discourse of those who wrote, the

American experience compelled all Europeans, mestizos, and other indige-

nous Americans as well to impose a symbolic order on American reality.

The textual manifestation of stereotyped indigenous culture is based on the

same phenomenon occurring in day-to-day Spanish popular perception.

Of course, the tradition of textual authority led those who recorded the

new American reality to rely heavily on previous writings, thus distorting

even further the cultural referents that they were attempting to represent.

For later chroniclers—especially mestizo and indigenous writers—theuse of terms originally foreign to the culture being represented do not indi-

cate the same processes of displacement and stereotyping but rather the

hegemony of semiotic conventions. Several decades after Oviedo wrote his

description of the Caribbean areíto, the Mexican chronicler Hernando

Alvarado Tezozomoc describes pre-Hispanic indigenous nobles from cen-

tral Mexico engaging in “el areito y el mitote con mucha vocería” (1975,

592), but his discourse is not troubled by the same ambivalence. TheNahuatl term mitote, mentioned by Cano in Oviedo’s dialogue, appears in

Tezozomoc’s text following the Caribbean term areíto, but there is no indi-

cation of semiotic tension between signifiers and referents. In Peru as well,

in El señorío de los Incas, Pedro Cieza de León augments the Quechua term

taqui with areyto to refer to an indigenous Andean tradition of song and

dance: “Y besando, hicieron reverencia al sol y hicieron un gran taqui y

areyto” (1985, 136) [And kissing, they gave reverence to the sun and per-formed a great taqui and areíto]. The fact that Tezozomoc and Cieza de León

do not struggle to justify their use of the Caribbean term suggests that it had

acquired common usage in Mexico and Peru to refer to native practices of



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song and dance.6 This widespread use of the term to refer to traditions from

various Amerindian cultures fosters a reverse stereotype in which indige-

nous and/or mestizo writers like Tezozomoc unwittingly displace the orig-

inal referents of signifiers like areíto not with Spanish referents, as in

Oviedo, but rather with their own indigenous cultural referents such as the

activities associated with the mitote.

This semiotic economy of early colonial historiographic description

involves different processes and effects depending upon the identity and

position of the producer and receptor of a text. Oviedo’s description could

not have reproduced in the minds of his European readers the same cogni-

tive processes of analogy and assimilation that informed the production of

his linguistic descriptions of indigenous culture. Oviedo’s writing reveals

the semiotic tension and the processes of colonial mimicry and stereotyp-

ing rooted in his material experience of the Caribbean, but European read-

ers without this experience would only have been able to extract the final

product. The same is true of indigenous, mestizo, and European readers

from other parts of the Americas. Texts by writers from non-Caribbeanareas that employ terms whose referents have already been stereotyped

(such as the areíto) perpetuate the process but in different ways. In Mexico

and Central America, for example, the referent of the indigenous term

mitote itself did not give way to a foreign cultural practice known as the

areíto. This displacement only occurred on the level of the signifiers: the

Taíno linguistic signifier “areíto” attempted to displace, or perhaps simply

augment, the Nahuatl signifier “mitote” while the referent remained thesame (or at least maintained a continuity with its past). For Europeans, this

difference may be merely academic because it produces the same homoge-

nizing effect. But for indigenous Americans and mestizos, the use of the for-

eign signifiers to refer to their own cultural practices with long traditions

indicates a submission to the hegemony of colonial linguistic practice.

The analysis presented here has focused on the displacement and

stereotyping of indigenous culture that occurred in the semiotic domain.Objections to this type of anticolonial or postcolonial analysis often claim

that it neglects the material conditions of colonization. It is important to

note that the use of indigenous Caribbean terms such as areíto to refer to



18/23

other indigenous American cultural practices and concepts does not repre-

sent in and of itself a colonization or even hybridization of material culture,

but rather the effect of a semiotic homogenization (mimicry and stereo-

type) based upon ethnocentric cognitive and epistemic processes. Most

late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Mexicans were probably not even

aware of the Caribbean origin of the word areíto, and the mere use of the

term certainly did not change the nature of their cultural activities. Of

course, such objections must be addressed on a case-by-case basis, but I

would argue that the semiotic phenomena that I have discussed are inti-

mately related to the material processes that resulted in the destruction,

disappearance, or radical transformation of indigenous societies. In other

words, the colonial project is as much a linguistic process as it is an eco-

nomic and political one.

The use of stereotyping terms by Europeans and indigenous writers

represents what James Lockhart somewhat awkwardly labels “double mis-

taken identity” in which relationships of similarity based upon common

denominators of two distinct sociocultural phenomena lead each culture toequate a foreign practice or concept with its own (1985, 477). In Oviedo’s

text there is no indigenous Caribbean subject that might have “misread”

his description of the areíto. But the very possibility of such a misreading

constitutes the condition of possibility not only of Oviedo’s description but

of any description at all. Oviedo’s endeavor to describe Caribbean culture

to his European audience confronts the language of the other and attempts

to translate it into a more familiar idiom. At an empirical level, he achieveshis purpose, but transcendentally his effort illustrates the impossibility of

such a translation. As Derrida explains, language is never one’s own, but

rather always the language of the other: “language is for the other, coming

from the other, the coming of the other” (1998, 68). In Oviedo’s text, the

language of the other manifests itself at two different levels. First, at the

empirical level, the indigenous term areíto itself belongs to a language of

another, to Taíno. In this sense, Oviedo literally employs the empirical lan-guage of an other, in spite of the fact that the other to whom he addresses

his text is European rather than Caribbean. On a transcendental level, how-

ever, it makes no difference that Oviedo employs terms from two different



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empirical languages. Ultimately, in the same way that Oviedo attempts

empirically to homogenize the indigenous and Spanish referents (areíto on

the one hand and baile, cantar, romance, and historia on the other), both the

Spanish and the Taíno signifiers in Oviedo’s text participate in the one lan-

guage that Derrida calls the hegemony of the homogenous or the promise

of an absolute idiom (1998, 40, 67). This one language is not an empirical

language but rather an openness to the other that constitutes the possibil-

ity of all empirical languages (e.g., Spanish and Taíno). This one language

is always inherently a colonial phenomenon (39–40), even when it is post-

colonial or anti-colonial. It is in this sense that Derrida can claim that we

both do and do not only ever speak one language; and that we only have one

language but it is not ours.

In spite of the disappearance of the Caribbean areíto, along with the

indigenous societies that practiced it, the colonial texts that attempt to doc-

ument such indigenous cultural traditions have served as a source for later

postcolonial revivalist movements. Since independence in the nineteenth

century, Latin American societies have increasingly revived indigenous cul-ture through nationalistic, patriotic enterprises of identity formation and

rejection of—or at least ambivalence about—the cultural hegemony of

Spain. In the twentieth century, anti-colonial or postcolonial philosophical

and cultural reassessments have increased awareness of the vitality and

presence of the indigenous American heritage. The modern use of the term

areíto demonstrates this awareness well. In the late 1960s and early 1970s,

radical second generation Cuban-Americans began organizing themselvesinto socialist organizations, one of which eventually became known as

Areíto, and began publishing a magazine by the same name (Grupo Areíto

1978). In 1992, Juan Luis Guerra, a Dominican merenguero, recorded a CD

entitled Areíto. The title track of this CD attempts to reproduce character-

istics of indigenous Taíno music and rhythm—noticeably not merengue.

This revival and appropriation of indigenous terms for twentieth-century

cultural and ideological purposes may be as equally complex as the originalcolonial dialogue.

For practical reasons, I have limited my examination of Oviedo’s

description of indigenous culture to the Taíno areíto, but the text abounds



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with other indigenous elements that pass through similar processes of

ambivalence, mimicry, and stereotype: concepts and terms such as teíte

(chief), cacique (chief), and çemi (god and/or devil) to name just a few. In

“Relaciones del Taíno con el Caribe insular,” Nicolás del Castillo Mathieu

(1982) documents the origins and general adaptation of several indigenous

Caribbean terms and demonstrates the temporal and spatial pervasiveness

of colonial stereotyping. The Spanish cultural dialogues with some of these

concepts, especially religious ones such as çemi, are perhaps even more

complicated. Oviedo chooses to equate the indigenous çemi with the

Christian devil. In practice, the indigenous customs associated with the

concept of çemi were closer to the religious adoration of the Spanish God.

But the Indians had no knowledge of Christianity, and, according to

Oviedo’s theology, all else was of the devil. Of course, this view was not

held by all European writers. Las Casas in particular polemically main-

tained that indigenous religion functioned as a natural precursor to

Christianity in much the same way that Old Testament religion had done in

the Old World. The explicit and implicit religious ideology of Oviedo’s textand the dialogue it carries out with other Spanish writers and indigenous

American religions and mythologies constitute another dimension of the

colonial discourse of the Historia.

The obvious conclusion to this analysis is that colonial discourse often

tells us very little about the American cultures that it attempts to represent.

The point here, though, is not to develop a negative hermeneutics of colo-

nial discourse but rather to attempt a better understanding of the discursiveforces at work in the negotiation between European discourse and indige-

nous American culture. I have focused primarily on Oviedo, but many of

the same discursive phenomena appear in other chronicles. The mimicry

and stereotyping in colonial discourses do not constitute a complete pic-

ture of the intellectual conquest; but they form an important part of the

complex dynamics that characterize early colonial texts, and they illustrate

in dramatic ways the inherent coloniality of language in general.

I



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N O T E S

1. For an extensive discussion of indigenous American modes of expression, see the col-

lection of essays in Writing without Words (1994), ed. Elizabeth Hill Boone and Walter

Mignolo.

2. Most New World writers faced with the marvelous reality of America often explained

that what they had seen or experienced was so wonderful or strange or diabolical, etc.

that they had not the words to express it. This recourse is so common that it can be

termed a topos. For an explanation of topoi in general, see Ernst Robert Curtius’s

European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (1990), chapter 5. One need only scan

writings from the New World to notice this rhetorical device: see Cristóbal Colón,

Textos y documentos completos (1982); Bernal Diaz del Castillo, Historia verdadera de los

sucesos de la conquista de la Nueva España (1983); and Bartolomé de Las Casas, Brevísima

relación de la destrucción de las Indias (1995).

3. For an overview and examples of the marvelous real, see Alejo Carpentier’s essay “The

Baroque and the Marvelous Real” (1995) and novels El reino de este mundo (1978) and

Los pasos perdidos (1995). For magical realism, see Parkinson Zamora and Faris,

Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community (1995), and Gabriel García Márquez’s

novel Cien años de soledad (1993).

4. I thank Edward H. Friedman for suggesting the phrase “double metonymy” to

describe this phenomenon.

5. Diccionario de la Lengua Española. Madrid: Real Academia Española., s.v. “areito.” (Voz

taína.) m. Ant. Canto y danza populares de los antiguos indios de las Grandes Antillas

en sus fiestas. Se extendió la voz para otras fiestas en otros lugares del continente.”

6. The word mitote derives from the reflexive form of the Nahuatl verb to dance, mihtotia.

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Ambivalence Mimicry and Stereotype in Fe

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