The Amazons of Orellana: Prefiguration of the unknown in the relationship of Gaspar de Carvajal

Abstract

The present article proposes a hermeneutic reading of the "Relación que escribió Fray Gaspar de Carvajal, fraile de la orden de San Domingo de Guzmán, del nuevo descubrimiento del famoso Río Grande que descubrió por muy gran ventura el capitán Francisco de Orellana desde su nacimiento hasta salir al mar, con cincuenta y siete hombres que trajo consigo y se echó a su ventura por el dicho río, y por el nombre del capitán que lo descubrió se llamó Río Orellana" [1542]. This research is interested in analizing how the conquerors use the classical archive of representation of otherness to read the radical difference of the Amazonian territory and its inhabitants. It is also interested in the narrative constructions of the relationship, understood as a literary and rhetorical object of justification of the conquering enterprise. This first relation about the amazonic territory, which took root in the popular imaginary of the western society, established certain prejudices and fantasies that persist in our days.