Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca: His Account, His Life, and the Expedition of Pánfilo de Narváez by Rolena Adorno, Patrick Charles Pautz (review)

BOOK REVIEW S 1 8 9 McFarland’s work is excellent in many ways, offering interviews with Welch, reviews of his books, reflections and reactions from a growing body of critics, a well-rounded and annotated bibliography, and a close analysis of the Welch canon. Alvar Núñez, Cabeza de V aca: His Account, His Life, and the Expedition of Pánfilo de N arváez. 3 vols. By Rolena Adorno and Patrick Charles Pautz. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999. 1,552 pages, $275.00. Reviewed by Sandra L. Dahlberg University of Houston-Downtown Much concerning Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s life and his relación (account), according to Rolena Adorno and Patrick Charles Pautz, has been mired in myths and misperceptions incorporated into the historical and tex­ tual records. They contend that over the past four and a half centuries Cabeza de Vaca and his relación have been misinterpreted, decontextualized, and appropriated to suit prevailing ideologies. In Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca: His Account, His Life, and the Expedition of Pánfilo de Narváez, Adorno and Pautz provide an exhaustive archival study of extant data pursuant to Cabeza de Vaca. They examine over five centuries of historical and legal manuscripts rel­ ative to sixteenth-century Spanish politics, exploration, and New World gov­ ernance from which they produce a scrupulous examination of previous Cabeza de Vaca scholarship and establish foundations for continued research. Adorno and Pautz’s thoroughness can border on tediousness; yet, it is this exact atten­ tion to detail that rewards the specialized scholar as well as the enthusiast. Two strategies seem to inspire Adorno’s and Pautz’s research: first, to compellingly disengage Cabeza de Vaca’s works from the travel writing genre and resituate them in terms of narratological and autobiographical strategy; and second, to dispute twentieth-century depictions of Cabeza de Vaca as a “tragic, romantic figure” who wrote an apologia after the failed Narváez expedition (1:412). Instead, they offer substantive evidence that demonstrates the “per­ sonal honor and status that [Cabeza de Vaca] enjoyed in the last years of his life” during which he maintained intimate ties to the king and the Spanish court and the sustained respect of his peers (1:413). Adorno and Pautz “address the question of referentiality in the relación, in this way indirectly responding to recent, frequently repeated claims (from the fields of literary and cultural studies) to the effect that Cabeza de Vaca’s account has little to do with any attempt to represent experienced reality” (2:xv). They emphasize that they “do not see [the relación] as a transparent source by which to access the Amerindian world of North America, its flora and fauna— but rather for what it tells about Cabeza de Vaca’s interpretation of his experience of that world” (2:xvii). In doing so, Adorno and Pautz reassert the literary basis 1 9 0 WAL 3 6 . 2 S u m m e r 2 0 0 1 of Cabeza de Vaca’s relación while sustaining its historicity. Volume 1 includes the original Spanish text of the 1542 edition of Cabeza de Vaca’s relación (with the original foliation intact) accompanied by Adorno and Pautz’s English translation. The relación is annotated to indicate textual discrepancies between the 1542 relación published in Zamora, Spain, and the 1555 relación published in Valladolid, Spain, against which they scrutinize book 35 of Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés’s Historia general y natural de las Iridies, islas y tierra firme de mar océano. From Oviedo’s Historia, Adorno and Pautz “reconstruct” the now lost Joint Report cowritten by Cabeza de Vaca and fellow Narváez expedition survivor Andrés Dorantes and isolate assertions made singly by Cabeza de Vaca in his relación. This allows Adorno and Pautz to present possible motivations for and results of Cabeza de Vaca’s deviations from the stricter confines of the jointly authored report. Thorough textual exegesis propels Adorno and Pautz to contend that the 1555 relación is driven by a very different rhetorical positionality than is the 1542 text, insist­ ing...