Authors

Pedro Cebollero, Auburn UniversityFollow

Mazanet's 1693 "Report to the Viceroy:" The Role of Alterity, Bare Life, and Agency in the Attitude of a Spanish Friar against Texas Amerindians

Abstract

This study evaluates Spanish missionary Damián Mazanet’s beliefs and attitudes about the Texas Indians expressed in a 1693 letter. In order to control the Amerindians, Mazanet represents them as beings with bare life, which gives him permission to implement biopolitical tactics such as the reorganization of Indian populations around the mission, their removal from their own lands, and their conversion by force. In spite of this, the examination of textual silences in the letter shows such Amerindians as agents who actually refuse to be subjected by the Spanish friars and soldiers.

Bio Note

Pedro Cebollero received his PhD at Boston University. He studies the Spanish colonial literature of Latin America and Southern U.S. He has published a book and three journal articles on colonial poetry and chronicles.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Recommended Citation

Cebollero, Pedro (2018) "Mazanet's 1693 "Report to the Viceroy:" The Role of Alterity, Bare Life, and Agency in the Attitude of a Spanish Friar against Texas Amerindians," The Coastal Review: An Online Peer-reviewed Journal: Vol. 8: Iss. 1, Article 2.
DOI: 10.20429/cr.2018.080102
Available at: https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/thecoastalreview/vol8/iss1/2