The Realities and Contradictions of History

I was happy and amazed to see Michael Ventura’s article on Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca (“Heart of Darkness, Heart of Light,” Jan. 15). I am one teacher who includes that remarkable man in his history course, emphasizing his courage and endurance and how he set the stage for so many subsequent events in the history of the American West.

I was thrilled one year to find one of his descendants in my class.

David W. Hassler

Pasadena

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When one reads Cabeza de Vaca’s “La Relacion,” what we as readers get is his experience of the reality he lived. That reality, now inaccessible to contemporary man, was full of “uncivilized uncertainties” (to paraphrase Joseph Conrad). Rather than concentrating on the corroboration or verification of what actually happened, we should try to understand that what appears as magic to some people is an intrinsic part of the reality of others.

Magical realism refers to that wonderful human ability to transform adverse factual events into a more bearable, less painful experience. Such a transformation is not subject to being defined as true or false. It exists as a survival tool, without which Cabeza de Vaca would not have been able to write “La Relacion.

Berta Graciano

Westwood

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I agree with Ventura that we need to include more about our Hispanic background in our history classes. But his idea that Cabeza de Vaca is consciously kept away from students because he “heard bells in the wind,” or because he gives us a different picture of what the Indians and Spanish were like, is total poppycock. I’ve taught both Spanish and history for almost 30 years; I tell the story of Cabeza de Vaca, often in both subjects, but that’s because I know about him, which most teachers do not.

Cabeza de Vaca wasn’t the only Spaniard who protested the way Native Americans were being treated. Many did so. In fact, the reason that Christopher Columbus died in prison was that the crown tired of his refusal to stop mistreating Indians in the Caribbean, such treatment being against Spanish law.

People like Cortez deserve more honest treatment. He was far from the monster described by revisionist historians; others such as Pizarro and Narvaez deserve to be better known for their villainy. And the Indians themselves were less than Noble Savages; they were quite busy kidnaping, enslaving, killing and sacrificing each other before the Europeans came.

Heather Smith

Fountain Valley