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Alonso De Zorita’s career as a Spanish judge in the Indies in the years 1548–1556, though not as well known as the career of Bartolomé de las Casas and other pro-Indian reformers, merits serious study. The arrival of Zorita and his subsequent actions as an administrator and legist represent one example of the serious efforts of the Crown in the 1540’s to impose royal control over a quasi-feudal class of conquerors and pobladores which had from the early sixteenth century entrenched itself in the New World. Moreover, Zorita was not only a jurist who attempted to implement the New Laws of 1542–43, but an inspired humanitarian who took an active interest in the native civilizations of the New World and questioned the relations that had evolved and created “a Hispano-Indian society characterized by the domination of the masses by a small privileged minority…” His ardent defense of the Indians against the charge that they were “barbarians” included a relativist line of argument that anticipated Michel de Montaigne’s celebrated comment that “everyone calls barbarian what is not his own usage.” In addition, his inquiries into native history, land tenure and inheritance laws may be considered “in effect exercises in applied anthropology, capable of yielding a vast amount of information about native customs and society” and is an example of what Europe saw or failed to see in the sixteenth century when confronted with a strange new world.

In Shakespeare’s play, Pericles, the leading character interrogates a woman whom he does not know is actually his daughter, Marina. In his excitement, King Pericles asks: Where were you bred?/ And how achieved you these endowments, which/ You make more rich to owe?Whereupon Marina replies: If I/ Should tell my history, it would seem like lies/ Disdained in the reporting.How ironic that Shakespeare’s Marina bears a resemblance to the well-known Aztec princess, Malinche, also known as Marina. For the researcher engaged in telling the history of Malinche, there exists an inherent case of mistaken identity in particular indices and annotations to documents that are relevant to her history—a mistake as perplexing and deceptive as if to “seem like lies disdained in the reporting,”

No abstract

In Shakespeare’s play, Pericles, the leading character interrogates a woman whom he does not know is actually his daughter, Marina. In his excitement, King Pericles asks: Where were you bred?/ And how achieved you these endowments, which/ You make more rich to owe? Whereupon Marina replies: If I/ Should tell my history, it would seem like lies/ Disdained in the reporting. How ironic that Shakespeare’s Marina bears a resemblance to the well-known Aztec princess, Malinche, also known as Marina. For the researcher engaged in telling the history of Malinche, there exists an inherent case of mistaken identity in particular indices and annotations to documents that are relevant to her history—a mistake as perplexing and deceptive as if to “seem like lies disdained in the reporting,”