Here is some background information on the protagonist of the film and the author of our narrative. This information should be of consequence in assisting your comprehension of the action and dialogue. Take a moment to write down your thoughts about the film and let's see what happens in our class discussion of the odd circumstance of what we will come to know as Cabeza de Vaca's "double exteriority."
Albar (or Alvar) Nunez Cabeza de Vaca was the treasurer on the Narvaez expedition from Spain to the "new world" that was shipwrecked off the western coast of Florida in 1528, 9 years following Cortes's arrival in Mexico.
A biography from the New Perspectives on the West has a very informative summary of the events touched on or alluded to in the film.
A Biography of Cabeza de Vaca
Cabeza de Vaca was born into the Spanish nobility in 1490. Little of his early life is known, except that he made his career in the military. In early 1527 he left Spain as a part of a royal expedition intended to occupy the mainland of North America.
After their fleet was battered by a hurricane off the shore of Cuba, the expedition secured a new boat and departed for Florida. They landed in March 1528 near what is now Tampa Bay, which the expedition leader, Pánfilo de Narváez, claimed as the lawful possession of the Spanish empire.
Despite this confident declaration, the expedition was on the verge of disaster. Narváez's decision to split his land and sea forces proved a grievous error, as the ships were never able to rendezvous with the land expedition. The party soon overstayed its welcome with the Apalachee Indians of northern Florida by taking their leader hostage. Expelled and pursued by the Indians, suffering from numerous diseases, the surviving members of the expedition were reduced to huddling in a coastal swamp and living off the flesh of their horses. In late 1528, they built several crude rafts from trees and horse hides and set sail, hoping to return to Cuba.
Storms, thirst and starvation had reduced the expedition to about eighty survivors when a hurricane dumped Cabeza de Vaca and his companions on the Gulf Coast near what is now Galveston, Texas. They were initially welcomed, but, as Cabeza de Vaca was to remember, "half the natives died from a disease of the bowels and blamed us." For the next four years he and a steadily dwindling number of his comrades lived in the complex native world of what is now East Texas, a world in which Cabeza transformed himself from a conquistador into a trader and healer.
By 1532, only three other members of the original expedition were still alive -- Alonso del Castillo Maldonando, Andrés Dorantes de Carranca, and Estevan, an African slave. Together with Cabeza de Vaca, they now headed west and south in hopes of reaching the Spanish Empire's outpost in Mexico, becoming the first men of the Old World to enter the American West. Their precise route is not clear, but they apparently traveled across present-day Texas, perhaps into New Mexico and Arizona and through Mexico's northern provinces. In July 1536, near Culiacán in present-day Sinaloa, they finally encountered a group of fellow Spaniards who were on a slave-taking expedition. As Cabeza de Vaca remembered, his countrymen were "dumbfounded at the sight of me, strangely dressed and in company with Indians. They just stood staring for a long time."
Appalled by the Spanish treatment of Indians, in 1537 Cabeza de Vaca returned to Spain to publish an account of his experiences and to urge a more generous policy upon the crown. He served as a Mexican territorial governor, but was soon accused of corruption, perhaps for his enlightened conduct toward Indians. He returned to Spain and was convicted; a 1552 pardon allowed him to become a judge in Seville, Spain, a position which he occupied until his death in 1556 or 1557.
Follow up by Dr. J.
This biography is for the most part accurate for our purposes. What we also need is some testimony from him about his experiences. Here are a few exemplary quotations worth a read. Speaking of the natives he reports that "to bring all these people to Christianity and subjection to Your Imperial Majesty, they must be won by kindness, the only certain way." "These are the most obedient people we had found anywhere, also in general the best looking." "The people are well disposed, serving such Christians as are their friends with great good will."
In another passage in which Nunez describes in detail the details of indigenous life and spirituality, he uncertainly asserts that "We chse this course to find our more about the country, so that should G-d, our Lord please to lead any one of us to the land of the Christians, we might carry information od it with us."
Here are two other insightful comments: "it is because their method of cooking is so novel and strange, I must describe it." And when he confesses an interest or attraction to local practices he says that it is "to indulge the curiosity of human beings about each other."
By way of assuming two native postures: first peddlar anf then shaman, he is able to survive for six years running goods back and forth from the interior to the coast. In the course of this work he becomes a healer laying his hands ont he afflicted, breathing on the sick, bleeding them, and cauterizing wounds with hot coals. He is reported to have revived a dead man with the magical arts, arts that included by his tetsimony: "our method was to bless the sick, breathe upon them, recie a Pater Noster and Ave Maria, and pray earnestly to G-d our Lord for their recovery."
But the second coming of the Spanish with the natives, including Nunez in 1536 (the end of the film) in westrrn Mexico, the complex of self and other, us and them, becomes illlustratively complicated:
"We sought to ensure the freedom of the Indians and at the moment when we believed we had achieved it, the contrary occurred. They [the Christians] had in fact determined to attack the Indians whom we had sent away reassured as to their peaceful intentions."
The above quotations are taken from Nunez's Naufragios y comentarios better known to us as Adventures in the Unknown Interior of America. What can we learn about the relationship between the cultural being and organism that is humanity? What is the message of this film?
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9 comments:
I am glad that I experienced Cabeza de Vaca’s Naufragio from two perspectives. The film helped me understand his emotions - the extreme frustration and helplessness that he felt as a slave amongst the natives. Additionally, the film portrayed the cultural gap well; there were no subtitles while the natives were speaking to immerse the viewer in Alvar’s position because he was completely unaware of their language and customs. Oftentimes while watching the movie I was confused, why did the shaman and dwarf suddenly start laughing at Alvar? Why did the shaman draw a huge picture of a man and then stab his eye? Yet these queries are identical to what Alvar must have been thinking; the movie effectively changed my perspective – instead of being a passive viewer I was actively trying to figure out what was going on, just like Alvar.
However, it was also valuable to read the text because it described the customs of the natives better and never left me completely confused like the movie because it was written by an educated noble, Alvar. The text allowed me to know what he was thinking, instead of just what he was feeling. It is amazing that he could recall in such great detail all the natives he visited along with the specific features of their culture. The book showed the huge scope of his travels, he went from tribe to tribe, healing and bartering, but the movie did not give me as much a sense of continual motion.
I thought the end of the movie and the end of the book lined up well. In both, Alvar wants to save the natives from being enslaved and conquered by the “Christians.” Alvar no longer instantly identifies himself with the Christians because he has so profoundly experienced life as an “other,” an accepted shaman and member of the native population. He knows that the Christians will not treat the natives well because they only view the natives as superstitious and backwards people, but through his experiences, Alvar has learned to respect and understand the natives’ culture.
I agree with Hannah when she said that the movie forces the viewer to try to interpret the actions of the natives in a way similar to Cabeza de Vaca. The movie seemed to focus more on the violence and cruelty that Cabeza de Vaca experienced during his time with the natives. I didn’t really receive as much of a feeling of torture and slavery in the narrative that I did while viewing the film. I believe that the focus on pain in the beginning of the film attempt to show the viewer that initial disagreements will inevitably occur between differing cultures. However, as the film progresses, the message shifts to the idea that with time and effort (voluntary or not) cultural boundaries seem to slowly decay. This idea of expending a large level of effort to understand another culture is what I believe the movie was really about. Just like the prickly pears Cabeza de Vaca falls in love with, the initial exterior of the clash between cultures is rough and difficult to remove, but once removed, a sufficient, enjoyable relationship can develop.
I think that the message of the film was that on an individual level, through open mindedness and cultural immersion it is possible, although difficult to obtain an understanding of another culture as Cabeza de Vaca eventually does with the natives. However, a second message is that on a broader level of civilization against civilization it is nearly impossible to do, because this type of cultural encounter nearly always spirals down into violence. For example, perhaps the natives attacked Cabeza'a expedition because of what they had heard about what other Spaniards had done to natives, then other Spaniards hear of something like the grizzly remains in the boxes and at that point the gap is insurmountable. It seems somewhat similar to the conflicts between Israel and Palestine where every attack is in retaliation for the other side's previous attack and so the cycle of violence will never end.
In my opinion the message of this film is that cultural understanding takes extended interaction and great effort. Slowly over the course of nine years, Cabeza de Vaca manages to partially integrate himself into the native culture. His understanding is not complete and likely would never be. However, he has managed to gain enough understanding of these peoples to avoid conflict with them. This means that different cultures around the world, although they will never completely understand each other, must make an effort to gain enough understanding to avoid violence. Unfortunately, this has rarely happened in history.
The idea of Cabeza de Vaca’s “double exteriority” raises some interesting questions. By the end of his experience, he no longer belongs to the Spanish culture, but does not belong to the native culture either. However, everything that he objects to in Spanish society existed before his experience. So the question is did he ever really belong to Spanish culture, or did he just convince himself that he did? We have already discussed the fact in class that it is impossible to fully understand another culture (the asymptote). To extend this idea, can anyone ever really belong to something larger than themselves? Or do we just create ideas such as community or cultural identity out of necessity because we cannot bear the fact that each of us is truly alone as individuals, and everything outside of us is “other”?
Like Hannah, I also enjoyed the opportunity to experience Cabeza de Vaca’s story from the two different perspectives. The book, written by Alvar himself, seems to portray more of the historical aspect of his journey. It spends more time dealing with the physical when and where of Alvar’s years in the Americas among the natives. The movie, however, gets more at the emotional aspects of his journeys. It really immerses the reader into what Alvar experiences during his time among the natives. The movie is not quite the historical portrait of the book; there are significant time lapses, and virtually no description of where Alvar and his companions are throughout the movie. The movie seems to focus on the journey of Alvar becoming culturally assimilated to the natives in the new world. The message seems to be that although one must go through significant hardships to even begin to understand another culture, it can in fact be done. Alvar manages to embrace the culture of the natives while never quite losing his own culture. At first, it seems as if this is not possible. The lack of understand Alvar has for the native culture, and vice versa, seems to drive him to the brink of insanity. It is only after a significant period of time with the natives that he is able to accept and begin to understand their culture. He is the only one of his companions, however, that seems to be able to accept the natives as different, but still alright. Near the end of the movie, the few remaining men from his ship who are still with Alvar advise him to lie about his cultural “misdeeds” once they return to Christian lands. These men were never able to embrace the different culture they found themselves thrust into. I am glad we were able to read the book and watch the movie simultaneously because I feel Alvar’s story is in a way incomplete when viewed either solely from the historical aspect or solely from the more emotional aspect.
After reading everyone’s entries so far, I agree with how the movie focused more on making the audience feel Cabeza de Vaca’s experience in this foreign land than the book did, but this didn’t surprise me. After reading the introduction and getting the back story of why Cabeza de Vaca wrote about these experiences, it is quite obvious that he did so in “support of his petition for another royal contract for exploration and conquest in the Indies” (25). So right off the bat Cabeza de Vaca is trying to make a point and convince Charles V in order to get back to the new world. During this time he says to offer knowledge about the natives and therefore does not focus on his own feeling of otherness with them as much as he focuses on how they act and behave when faced with new and different humans. Having said that, there is one line in particular that struck me when reading the narrative and it was even mentioned in the introduction. Having become assimilated as much as possible to the natives, Cabeza de Vaca in a sense loses his humanity in his old life sense and becomes at one with the new culture. However, when he sees the Spaniards and says “for we went to them seeking liberty and when we thought we had it, it turned out to be so much to the contrary”. At this moment, Cabeza de Vaca has his realization of how different cultures define humanity differently and therefore after interactions with other cultures, Cabeza de Vaca has a new sense of the word.
Alan Yanchak
The disbelief of the Spanish upon seeing Cabeza de Vaca best describes the transformation he underwent. He was taken out of one culture and thrust into another. The differences were so radical and extreme that only four men out of hundreds survived. However, the fact that Cabeza de Vaca and his companions were able to adapt makes a statement on the relationship between an individual and culture. It shows that the similarities between human beings are greater than the differences between their respective cultures. For example, although they could not speak the same language as the natives, they could make gestures and understand facial expressions. These ‘human’ tools that they possessed made the difference for them between life and death. I think the film shows that individual cultures are not the edges of human society, but instead are more like artificially constructed walls that people stay behind. The tremendous hardships they suffered show that it is not easy to cross over those walls to engage another culture, but the benefits can also be rewarding. For Cabeza de Vaca managed to bring peace and understanding where there was none, even if it was short lived.
After seeing the movie and reading excerpts there is a conflict when it comes to piecing together Cabeza de Vaca’s experience. This conflict comes from the fact that upon writing the work, Cabeza de Vaca was very removed from the environment. While in the movie the director showed his near complete immersion into the new culture, the book was written once he had emerged from it again, and, therefore, it was impersonal. The culture had become the other rather than one with his own in faith, for example. But in the movie Cabeza de Vaca did become one with the new people; he could understand them because he was surrounded by their culture. He found a way to unify the groups based on the deeper connections rather than divide the groups based on the superficial differences, the differences on the surface of the culture. I think this is a key message of the film. A civilization may meet the eye as undeveloped, barbaric, unrefined, etc, but once you break that surface through immersion in the culture you can find the connection between all human life, the soul that unites all peoples.
A noticeable difference between the written Relacion and the film version seems to be that the film version focuses predominately on the epic journey as a tale of Cabeza de Vaca’s experience, whereas the original journal focuses on the natives and the native land. The narrative, since it is addressed to the King of Spain, is informative; de Vaca is alternately a botanist, zoologist, sociologist, and ambassador. The film, on the other hand, attempts to strip away the years after the experience during which de Vaca could sort out and rationalize his thoughts. Rather than report on de Vaca’s interest in edible plants, the film seeks to penetrate into the emotional turmoil that must have engulfed de Vaca and his men upon finding themselves is such cultural isolation; yet, the Relacion, itself, avoids emotional diction in order to stay true to its purpose.
Yet the fact that de Vaca was addressing the King did not cause him to abandon several of his most controversial realizations. He write that he told the Spanish not to enslave or attack the natives, despite the crown’s explicit authorization for the explorers to use force. He offers that the best way to teach the natives Christianity would be to win them over through kindness, despite the general hesitancy on the part of the Spanish to put forth that effort to learn the native culture.
Overall, both versions of the story seek to convey the underlying truth of the similarity of European and Native American reasoning and emotion. The works do make a point of acknowledging how complex the differences between cultures can be, but they do so in order to encourage the pursuit of finding that commonality. Neither the film nor the Relacion shies away from revealing the similarities between Spanish and Native American reasoning and emotion.
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