ves are reports of unsuccessful expeditions and chronicle the experiences of conquered conquistadors. Both Guerrero and Cabeza de Vaca function as interpreters of native cultures from an insider's perspective. Both narratives also reveal the difficulty of returning to the native culture. Cabeza de Vaca returned to Spain after his eight-year experience with a variety of native tribes, but Guerrero remained with the Mayans until his death. Mueller concludes by noting that both captivity narratives reflect an "attitude of tolerance and acceptance" of aspects of native culture (33).
- Nanfito, Jacqueline C. "Cabeza de Vaca's Naufrigios y Comentarios: The Journey Motif in the Chronicle of the Indies." Revista de Estudios Hispanicos 21 (1994): 179-87.
- Nanfito's essay suggests that the journey motif of Cabeza de Vaca's Relacion is a way to convey what she calls "nonspacial experiences" (179). Nanfito means that unlike many other chronicles of the New World that often function as guide books for travelers, Cabeza de Vaca's text uses the spatial elements as a metaphor of his spiritual journey. The spatial journey of Cabeza de Vaca is paralleled by a spiritual journey. The geographical account by Cabeza de Vaca of his eight years of interaction with the lands and natives of the Americas, according to Nanfito, is "simultaneously" tracing "the inner movement of his spiritual awakening" (180). Nanfito notes that the westward movement of Cabeza de Vaca in his travels is consistent with the notion in western thought that the West symbolizes "knowledge and spirituality in the symbolism of the Cosmos" (180). The journey motif, according to Nanfito, also serves as a way of representing Cabeza de Vaca's actual conquest of space through his adaptation as trader and shaman among the native tribes. Nanfito concludes that Cabeza de Vaca represents America in Relacion not only as a space for Spanish conquest but a place to be visioned with "the eyes of the heart" (187).
- Ortiz, Ann Massengill. The Prophetic Dimensions of the Naufrigios of Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca. Diss. U of North Carolina, 1995. Ann Arbor: UMI,1995.
- Ortiz's's dissertation focuses on the issue of prophecy in Cabeza de Vaca's narrative. She provides an overview of critical literature on Cabeza de Vaca's narrative and the general topic of prophecy. Cabeza de Vaca, according to Massengill, embodies in his self-descriptions a conception of hero, saint, shaman, and prophet. Relacion has been described by many as hagiography, and Ortiz asserts that "hagiographic overtones in the text permit the reader to see Nunez as a wilderness prophet and Christ figure" (iii). She examines how these notions of Cabeza de Vaca have been explored in critical literature. Patterns of prophecy and false prophecy are evident in Cabeza de Vaca's writing, creating a "weaving of prophetic voices" in a "unifying structure" (iv). Ortiz examines the ramifications of the prophetic dimension of Cabeza de Vaca's narrative on his own prophetic and shamanic activity.
- Pastor, Beatrice. "Silence and Writing: The History of the Conquest." 1492-1992: Re/Discovering Colonial Writing. Ed. Renee Jara and Nicholas Spadaccini. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1989. 121-63.
- Pastor asserts at the beginning of her essay that the 1992 celebration of Christopher Columbus's landing in America should have been the symbolic genesis of "a process of radical criticism" that approached the issues of conquest and discovery as "part of a project of demystifying and reevaluating" the study of the encounter between European conquerors and Native Americans (122). She calls Eurocentric historical accounts as a "vast mirage" that is created from "silence, omission, and absence" of Native voices. Columbus, Cortes, and Cabeza de Vaca are examined by Pastor. She suggests that Cabeza de Vaca's narrative "breaks the limits of the discourse of domination," by replacing the discourse of conqueror, with the discourse of ethnographer (136). Pastor traces in Cabeza de Vaca's Relacion, the stages of the transformation of the lost conquistador'