ALVAR NÚÑEZ CABEZA DE VACA

The present essay aims to analyze the reading circuits of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca ́s work, questioning its routes and/or its obstacles. For this, we analyze the material aspect of the book, that is, the taste of the reader along with the author ́s choices and the editorial decisions that lead to the success or the forgetting of a text. Here, we specifically work on the joint edition of Naufragios y Comentarios, published in Valladolid in 1555. The privilege that the first text of this book received over the second one, regarding its edition and reading logic through time, is one of the questions that articulate this essay and that we try to answer. For this, we deal with the problem of legality, politics and writing in this River Plate chronicle, with the purpose of elucidating if the legal mark that this story presents –which responds to the personal context of Cabeza de Vaca and to the imperial context in which the text was publishedis the reason for the lack of attention that has marked its “luck.”