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In Repuesta a Sor Filotea de la Cruz, Sor Juana shows a lot of strength and confidence; “Que solo con la confianza de favorecida y con los valimientos de honrada me puedo atrever a hablar con vuestra grandeza.” Her strength is evident in her rhetoric and her fearlessness to make powerful references. Footnote 14 reads “Get away from me! Take care that you do not see my face again, for on the day you see my face you shall die.” I found this reference to be a direct yet underlying sarcastic mockery of the bishop. She also shows strength in her thirst for knowledge. Her “deseo” was so strong that she even planned to attend university dressed as a boy. Sor Juana believed that you cannot understand something without the knowledge of many other things. She saw tremendous importance in being well rounded intellectually. This meant studying vigorously in many different fields and taking them all seriously. She sought to live a divine life and took knowledge and intelligence to a higher level beyond any scholastic teaching. On page 8 she writes, it is necessary to purge your mind before you can have a true understanding of higher intelligence, but to know everything “que ya se ve que no es fácil, ni aun posible.”

Sor Juana uses heavy religious rhetoric with many references to the bible. She believes that the bible and god are the center of the universe, they see no boundaries and everything else revolves around this center. I found it really interesting that she often repeated the same words. The ones I found she repeated the most were: disgust, temptation, sacred/holy and connect/connection. I am not sure if anyone else noticed this or if it is even worth mentioning but it is just something I observed.

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It has been very interesting reading the three very different but still very much connected books. They all represent different point of views but have similarities on a broader scale. Each author in their own individual way preserved a part of history with their encounters. Regardless, if readers agree or disagree with their perspectives, the authors allowed their audience (past or present) to enter a world that was full of conquest, exploration, evangelization, transculturation, attempts at preservation, exploitation of human life, material goods (gold etc.)and much more.

Cabeza de Vaca was writing a letter to the king of Spain wanting to explain his reasons for the failure of his journey. However, it is within this chronicle that the audience can read between the lines and truly discover some wonderful knowledge of the indigenous way of life and culture, how unfairly they were treated by the Europeans and the challenges the Spanish had with the newly encountered environment. As modern day readers we are also able to see how Spain, at this time, viewed the indigenous people, their traditions and everyday life.

Las Casas also wrote a letter to the king of Spain, but took a very different point of view than Cabeza de Vaca. Although both authors are from Spain, they did not see the conquest or treatment of the indigenous people the same way. Las Casas was not against converting the indigenous people, but he did disagree strongly with the manner in which the Spanish were treating the indigenous.

I found Garcilaso de la Vega’s point of view the most interesting because it is a rare perception on the events which took place. The indigenous culture was one of oral traditions and in comparison to the European documentation of the Spanish/New World encounters there is very little written documentation from an indigenous point-of-view.

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The second part of this book was very unlike the first. I felt like I was reading a different book altogether. The tone, the narrative as well as the focus all seemed to change abruptly after page 87. The first part of this book felt like a dedication, a celebration and preservation of the Incan traditions and culture. It was a wonderful and new look into the Incan way of life from a rare point of view. Something that really stuck out for me in this book was towards the end of the first part. Garcilaso de la Vega provided his readers with the different labels that were given to the different “mezclados”. These labels also came with a predetermined hierarchy. It was interesting to see that these ‘labels’ became very elaborate as the ethnic mixing became ever more intricate. Through Garcilaso de la Vega’s work it becomes apparent that the further you look down this complicated hierarchy and its classifications the cruder the labels became: “Al hijo de negro y de India o de indio y de negra, dicen mulato y mulata. A los hijos de éstos llaman cholo…quiere decir perro.” (pg. 86) The more ‘mixed’ that you were suggested the lower you found yourself within the hierarchy.

For me this book being divided into two parts the way it is really exemplifies the change of the Incan culture before and throughout the conquest/evangelization. Garcilaso de la Vega could not maintain the same tone as he did in the first half because the Incan culture and traditions had drastically changed: “Dándole gracias por la merced que les había hecho en traerlos a su verdadero conocimiento; también rendían gracias a los españoles sacerdotes y seculars, por haberles enseñado la doctrina critiana.” (pg. 114)