slaughter of an enormous steer destined for the marketplace, responded to don García de Vargas’s question with excitement by “putting both hands on his head in the shape of bull horns” (Chapter 16). Don García de Vargas misinterpreted this sign as a scornful reference to his wife’s infidelity, and the aforementioned tragedy ensued.
Among the more elaborate stories is the case of licenciado Gaspar de Peralta. In a male gathering Peralta is amused by a young man (F. de Ontanera) boasting about his wild escapades with a married woman, during one of which the baluster of her bed collapsed. Three days later don Gaspar de Peralta’s wife says: “Dear, call a carpenter to fix one of our bed’s balusters which has been broken” (Chapter 15). After a calculated plot with the help of one of his servants (a Pijao Indian, to be precise), Gaspar de Peralta murders his wife and her lover. There is also the case of Inés de Hinojosa, “a beautiful rich woman,” a sort of black widow, who has several of her husbands murdered by her own lovers before finally being brought to trial and executed: “She was hung from a tree, which still remains today, albeit dried out, more than 70 years later” (Chapter 10). This story has fascinated readers for centuries and has been the subject of two novels (Los tres Pedros en la red de Inés de Hinojosa, 1864, by Temístocles Avella Mendoza; and Los pecados de Inés de Hinojosa, 1986, by Próspero Morales Pradilla), as well as a very popular Colombian soap opera of the late 1980s.
Nevertheless, the most famous and complex case, which, as a paradigmatic narrative, has found its way into both Latin American short-story collections and US graduate students’ reading lists, is that of Juana Garcéa. A freed African slave settled in Santafé (today’s Bogotá), García sets up a profitable business advising women from the white elite on matters of secret love (witchcraft was among her alleged skills). In doing so, she amasses a considerable fortune and soon becomes interested in local political intrigues, furtively posting commentaries about local male politicians in the main plaza. Among her clients is a beautiful young woman who, during her husband’s long absences, “wanted to get pleasure from her beauty as to not let it go to waste” (Chapter 9), and whose unexpected pregnancy requires Juana Garcéa’s intervention. Through witchcraft she reveals to the young lady not only that her husband is going to be away long enough for her to give birth and pass the child off as an adopted orphan, but also that her husband is having an affair with another woman. Upon the husband’s return, and owing to the young wife’s audacious jealousy of his affair, her dealings with Juana García (as well as the great extent of Garcia’s clientele) are exposed. The black woman is denounced as a witch and eventually as the author of the clandestine posters. She is finally put on trial by the Inquisition and deported back to the Caribbean. None of her numerous white clients, however, is ever brought to trial.
On account of these stories, Juan Rodríguez Freile has been identified as a writer who is obsessed with female beauty and the pitfalls of women’s illicit love, and El carnero has been identified as a book about the moral weaknesses of the human flesh. However fascinating these outrageous cases might be, the fact remains that they are but a handful among a long series of narrated events that comprise the history of a century of conquest, settlement, and governmental organization of the New Kingdom of Granada (1538–1638).
There are 21 chapters in El carnero, and although the first one focuses on the origin and identity of the earliest Spanish conquistadors, Chapters 2 through 7 are a careful (albeit highly prejudicial) illustration of the indigenous culture of the area (the Muisca), including the civil war that crippled their resistance to the invading Spaniards. This chapter’s title is a good example of this focus on the indigenous: “Which tells who chiefs Guatavita and Bogotá were, who the ruler of this Kingdom and the Kingdom of Tunja were, as well as his entourage. It tells how they named chiefs and kings, and explains the origin of the misleading name El Dorado” (Chapter 2).
The following 14 chapters are structured in chronological order, and include comprehensive reports on a variety of vicissitudes of every civil and ecclesiastical administration throughout those hundred years. These contain details about the official terms and the personal lives of each president, judge (oidor), royal auditor (visitador), every bishop and priest of some distinction, as well as the most resonant civil, economic, criminal, and problems of public order (Rodríguez Freile called them “cases”) that these crown officials had to contend with during their respective administrations. This structure of the text follows the gradual establishment and recurring crisis of Spanish rule in the region, allowing an explanation not only of a few spectacularly criminal or shameful events and different clashes and conspiracies among powerful local men, women, and political figures, but also of the petty everyday cases of a culturally and racially diverse population. Even though the most shocking cases took place in the main cities of this Spanish kingdom (particularly Santafé), the book is not concerned solely with urban events but also with those taking place in the countryside and on the frontier. In this sense, El carnero follows the general pattern of most Spanish chronicles or histories of America in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
The title of Chapter 8 illustrates the structure and general theme of El carnero, that is, the intricacies of Spanish colonial imperial management: “Which tells of the arrival of don Luis de Lugo as Governor of this Kingdom; of the arrival of licenciado Miguel Díez de Armendáriz, the first auditor and judge, as well as of the events that took place until the foundation of the Real Audiencia.” A reiteration of this rigid structure is made in two final additional sections, entitled not “chapters” but “catalogues.” The first one is devoted to civil and military leaders: “A catalogue of governors, presidents, judges, and Royal auditors that this kingdom has had since 1538, the year of its conquest, until this present year of 1638, a hundred years after this Kingdom was conquered.” The last catalogue, in the same fashion, deals with ecclesiastical authorities “since the year 1569 when the holy church was given metropolitan status.” These final two summaries of sorts reiterate the plan of the book, which celebrate the colony’s consolidation during the first century of the Spanish presence in the region.
All of these stories (from the impudent to the serious) are nonfictional, well-researched and well-documented reports. However, like most writers of his time, Rodríguez Freile relies on literary strategies in the exposition of his stories and displays ample knowledge of the popular humanist literature available in Spain and the New Kingdom of Granada. Some of these literary techniques include the author’s effort to make the readers participants in the unfolding of the story by having direct contact with them. He fictionalizes himself as a busy narrator inside the text, appeals to his readers’ attention, and manipulates their interpretation. He creates suspense, by advancing or withholding pieces of information throughout several chapters, and by skillfully using dialogues. However, these literary strategies do not obscure the fact that the author explicitly states in his prologue, as well as throughout his work, that his purpose is to write a history of real events, based on existing documentation and available testimonies. Rodríguez Freile reminds us, for instance, that historians like himself “are compelled to tell the truth lest their conscience be compromised” (Chapter 11). He also frequently alludes to the historical documents consulted, “which can be found in the cabildo of this city of Santafé” (Chapter 8).
Rodríguez Freile’s frequent focus on the moral and civil corruption of Spanish and Spanish-American subjects has promoted, particularly among literary critics, a utopian interpretation of El carnero in which the text is seen as a glaring critique of the colonial status quo and the author as a candid
