Volume 3, Issue 4 (Fall 1994)

From the Editor's Desk

This issue of CLAHR, thematically dedicated to indigenous topics in colonial Latin America, rounds out the final number of our third volume. The first article, "Dealing with Foreigners: A Comparative Essay Regarding Initial Expectations and Interactions between Native Societies and the English in North America and the Spanish in Mexico," written by John Kicza, presents an overview of comparative colonial perspectives in Spanish America and the English North American colonies. Kicza argues that "native peoples sought to understand European newcomers within the cultural and knowledge bases available to them, and, at times, to utilize them to their best advantage in traditional political and military interactions." The second article, "'Like Children under Wise Parental Sway' : Passive Portrayals of the Guarani Indians in European Literature and The Mission," by Barbara Ganson, is more than a critique of the movie The Mission. It calls attention to the need to diminish, if not eliminate, our trained colonial voices in writing about our indigenous past and present in the Americas. In "El encuentro de dos mundos: la escritura de Dios y la voz mutilada," Oscar Rivera-Rodas similarly discusses how the colonial discourse barely admits the native point of view, and when it does, the indigenous voices are muted, barely audible, within the context of literary forms imposed on them by western civilization traditions transmitted through colonialism. Finally, in her article, "El controvertido papel de los misioneros en lndias," Ligia Rodriguez presents the historically controversial "civilizing mission" of all colonial institutions, particularly the Catholic church in Spanish America. Given the complexity of writing about Indians in colonial Latin America, the articles in this issue add perspectives to the historiographical body of literature that already exists and invite future researchers to continue probing our colonial past and the indigenous struggles against it.