The columbian texts in the light of Bartolomé de Las Casas’s discourse

Abstract

Although it is well known that the texts presumably produced by Columbus during his discovery voyages remain thanks to the version of them offered in Las Casas’s writings, in particular Historia de las Indias, the readings and re-writings of the travel diaries are based on a representation of Father Las Casas as a faithful and accurate transcriber of the  Columbian accounts. Restoring the Admiral’s texts to the intertext that embraces them involves bearing in mind the project of the agent producing the latter and therefore focusing on particular operations of selection, organization and emphasis which, rather than make the earlier versions more transparent, infuse them with new meanings. From this perspective, the record of the events that occurred during Columbus’s voyage may be understood as a series of sequences articulating the mandate according to unquestionable norms, the guilt and the punishment of a character who, aware of his mission, turns it into a sin he must atone for.