El doble discurso de la frontera: Los textos catequísticos del padre Luis de Valdivia

Abstract

In his political texts Luis de Valdivia proposes the border as a space of interaction and as a strategy that would permit the administration or control of a range of cultural differences always within relationships of hierarchy and authority. The catechistic discourse makes visible the limits of the binary structure that organizes the production of identities. These colonial discursive practices of cultural domination, exercised in the name of a supremacy that is produced only in the moment of differentiation, deny the “original” and “unique” identity on which their authority is rooted. This authority attempts to reinforce itself with the support of the word divine. Nonetheless, the translation of this word in the native language and the pertinacity of the indigenous sign, convert the language of the colonizer into a hybrid language.