Seminar "Chronicles and testimonies of the Hispanic presence in the present-day United States (16th and 17th centuries)"

The chroniclers and chronicles that have dealt with the territory that today corresponds to the United States have not been the ones that have attracted the attention of scholars the most. Neither the existing populations, nor the processes of exploration, conquest, evangelization and colonization that took place there, nor the authors who have ventured to write on the subject have been able to match their counterparts further south. The chroniclers who wished to leave testimony of their experiences did not have the talent shown by those who took on the task of narrating the stories of the richer and more populated lands. Neither were the events as surprising and extraordinary as the conquest of Tenochtitlán or Cuzco, which made it even more difficult to achieve outstanding writing. Only a few isolated accounts, such as those of Cabeza de Vaca or Inca Garcilaso, who wrote without direct knowledge of the territory, possess a literary quality that equals those of the most famous histories of the Indies.

However, although these considerations may explain why the chronicles about what is now the United States have not had the same transcendence as their equivalents about other territories, it is still a situation that is far from acceptable. The limited dissemination of such texts not only makes them unknown, which in itself is a cause for dissatisfaction, but also contributes to hindering familiarity with a past and a land that are increasingly alien to what really happened. Knowledge of the Hispanic past of more than half of today's United States will be more difficult to explain, as in fact it already is, if we do not pay attention to the sources and authors who narrated it for the first time.

The purpose of this seminar is to bring together authors who deal with these chronicles and the chroniclers who wrote them. The participation of these experts will not only deal with the stories and tales but also with their authors, the contents of their writings and the ideas they contain. It is not a question, therefore, of focusing interest on a more or less erudite reminder that favors the mention and a superficial external study of the works, but to go beyond this descriptive work and analyze their contents as expressions of ideas, mentalities and concerns of those responsible for them. Only in this way will we be in a better position to make them known, to transmit what they wanted to do, what they achieved and what repercussions they had.