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EL INCA RETURNS TO HIS NATIVE HERITAGE Passing years and geographical space create a separation between El Inca and Peru that is permanent by the time El Inca begins to write La Florida. Saddened and embittered by the rejection he receives from the Spanish society into which he had hoped to be accepted, he ¤nds his Native American identity to be a source of solace. His emotional ties to the Peruvian Amerindian culture to which his mother belonged begin to strengthen and grow. He begins to express a kinship with Native Americans throughout the Americas and to seek justice and equality on their behalf. In La Florida del Inca, he begins a race with time to change the perception that the natives of La Florida are barbarous and uncivilized and to see that their redeeming qualities, human potential, and noble character are included in the historical record. El Inca’s views are quite extraordinary in sixteenth-century Europe. We must remember that only half a century before La Florida was published, King Charles V of Spain convened a royal council of inquiry to determine whether the New World inhabitants were fully human, with the same rights as all other humans. We know from the historical record that the reality of the relationship between Spain and its colonies was one of total exploitation, with the king and his ministers demanding the New World resources while requiring that the colonists purchase all necessities from Spain. In this pecking order, Amerindians were excluded and were used as slave labor, the very worst exploitation. From the time of Columbus, the Spaniards had considered the Amerindians subhuman. El Inca is attempting to provide a counterargument to a popular conception that is one-hundred-percent negative and, with his universalist philosophy , to persuade the Spanish government and its people to respect the New World natives. Castanien states that El Inca’s goal is 3 El Inca’s Native Americans to present the Indians in a favorable light, to counteract the idea of a barbaric people incapable of human behavior. Garcilaso takes pains to show that basically the Indians behave in much the same way as their Spanish visitors did. When it becomes necessary for him to report Indian cruelty, treachery, or other unpleasant manifestations of the human spirit, he does so, but balances such reports with incidents that show Spaniards capable of similar acts. (9) Brading calls La Florida del Inca “the opening shot in Garcilaso’s literary battle to rehabilitate the good name of the American Indian” (257). Continuing , Brading states, “he concentrated his energies on literary composition, seeking thus to win a name in the world of letters so as to redeem his failure to obtain recognition at court and on campaign” (256). El Inca points out that the popular image of North American natives as heathen killers is created, at least in part, by their reaction to the rough treatment they receive at the hands of Spanish explorers: Después, el año de mil y quinientos y cuarenta y nueve,fueron a la Florida cinco frailes de la religión de Santo Domingo. Hízoles la costa el emperador Carlos Quinto, rey de España, porque se ofrecieron a ir a predicar a aquellos gentiles el evangelio sin llevar gente de guerra, sino ellos solos, por no escandalizar aquellos bárbaros. Más ellos, que lo estaban ya de las jornadas pasadas, no quisieron oír la doctrina de los religiosos, antes, luego que los tres de ellos saltaron a la tierra, los mataron con rabia y crueldad. (522) After 1549, ¤ve friars of the order of St. Dominic went to La Florida. The emperor Charles V, king of Spain, sent them at his expense because they offered to go and preach the gospel to those heathen without taking soldiers with them, going alone in order not to alarm those barbarians. But the latter were still disturbed from the past expeditions, and would not listen to the religious teachings. On the contrary, as soon as three of them set foot on the shore, they killed them with rage and cruelty. (556) That El Inca is the ¤rst intellectual to recognize and protest the destructive power of globalization and the cultural hegemony it causes is a plausible argument . He believes that native cultural integrity should be respected and allowed to continue, with one exception—religion. He very sincerely wants to see the Amerindians accept the Catholic religion, but he wants the Europeans to...

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