| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 88.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 88.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Writing Violence on the Northern Frontier: The Historiography of Sixteenth-Century New Mexico and Florida and the Legacy of Conquest. By José Rabasa. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000. xiv, 359 pp. Cloth, $59.95, ISBN 0-8223-2535-7. Paper, $19.95, ISBN 0-8223-2567-5.)

In Writing Violence on the Northern Frontier, José Rabasa applies the methodologies and rhetoric of subaltern studies to documents written by Spanish explorers regarding their travels and exploits on New Spain's far northern frontier. Rabasa, a professor of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of California–Berkeley, approaches those documents with the eye of a postmodern literary critic, using in his interpretation a range of theoretical stances that include cultural anthropology, psychology, cultural studies, and comparative literature. The book consists of an introduction and six chapters, each of which focuses on a particular document that details the Spanish conquest of New Mexico or Florida. These include Cabeza de Vaca's Naufragios (Castaways, 1542, 1555); the Ordenanzas of 1573, particularly their guidelines for the writing of relaciones (reports); Gaspar de Villagrá's Historia de la Nueva México (1610); Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo's Historia general y natural de las Indias occidentales (1535); Garcilaso de la Vega's La Florida del Inca (1605); and anti-Spanish pamphlets written by Protestants. 1

The author devotes his introduction to an explanation of "writing violence" and "violent writing." He explains that 2

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