Barbarians in their Language but Greek in their Manners. Representing the Andeans in the 16th Century

Abstract

In the writings about the age of discovery we often find that native Americans are classified as barbarous due to their lack of letters. From Herodotus to José de Acosta we can recognize a mixture of communities around the world that were sanctioned not only as different but altogether inferior because they did not speak the language or, as it happened during the age of discoveries, did not have writing as a cultural technology. The barbarian appears as the natural man, deprived of malice but equally deprived of agency and therefore understood, classified and finally colonized by the European. The barbarous men that I study in the Andean context counterbalance this perspective. They are barbarians, but they are far from having the appearance of the wild man, and of course they speak their minds. Against the universal overestimation of the written language, they remain in the realm of the oral. The prestige of the oral is evident in their performances. In the Andes they confront and speak to the legitimate representatives of the king of Spain. In this oral realm the supposed superiority of the literate vanishes and the European interlocutor is forced to recognize the wisdom and truth contained in the words of the barbarian. The latter becomes an equal and therefore the European can speak through him. This is not necessarily ventriloquism since the ultimate goal of this rhetoric exercise is to advance the cause of the Andean man, always against the greed of the conquistadors. This essay has a starting point in the conviction that reading in context is the only way to allow texts to reveal their content in a thorough manner. In this essay I have the intention of pointing to a group of writings from the Age of Discovery that tell us fascinating anecdotes or stories that are close to historical facts. Taken in isolation