SOURCE: “Story vs. Discourse in the Chronicle of the Indies: Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca's Relacion,” in Hispanic Journal, Vol. 5, No. 2, Spring 1984, pp. 89-99.

In the following essay, Dowling claims that one of the most interesting elements of the Relación is its tension between historical and fictional narrative.

One of the most abundant types of Latin American Colonial writings, the chronicle of the Indies, has proven to be at the same time one of the most difficult for literary critics to approach.¹ The purely historical approach preferred by historians, geographers, and ethnographers tends to pursue the referent while neglecting formal aspects. The formalistic or purely structuralistic analysis of the works may, on the other hand, prove equally unsatisfactory by failing to consider chronicles as documents that are, by definition, records of events that really took place. Hardly more satisfying is the treatment in which a lengthy...