Inca Garcilaso de la Vega's Story of the Melons
The surface of Inca Garcilaso de la Vega's story of the melons is characterized by a discourse of colonialist racism. A modern day reader could deem de la Vega's writing as a misrepresentation of the truth to help further the Spanish colonialist cause. But upon deeper reading and reflection, it is evident that an alternative interpretation of the story is that it paints a picture of the ways in which cultural differences and conflicts played a role in the "encounters" between the Spanish and the Incas. Furthermore, the story shows an incomplete picture of the cultural conflicts by portraying them from the perspective of the Spanish.
The story of the melons in Inca Garcilaso de la Vega's Comentarios reales de los Incas can easily be interpreted as racist and colonialist and could be dismissed by any historians as improbable, impossible, and possibly even a fiction. The discourse used by de la Vega is indeed the racist language used by the colonists and the conquistadors of the time. In his introduction to the story, de la Vega sets the scene by describing that the story demonstrates the Incas' inherent inferiority: "And, because the first melons that grew near Lima were the cause of a funny tale, it will be good for us to mention it here, where we will see very well what simpletons the Indians were in their ancient ways." The discourse of the piece of work is established quite early and thus the entire story is read with the understanding that de la Vega sees the Incas as inferior. This language was used often in its descriptions of indigenous peoples of colonies all over the world and in fact was often used in the justification of the colonization. Many colonizers described the indigenous people of particular regions as inferior, backwards, or even inferior and that they had to be "civilized." Rudyard Kipling's poem, "The White Man's Burden" even states that it is the responsibility of the Europeans to civilize. Much of the Jesuit missionary movement was based on the notion that the Indians' religions were inferior to the Jesuits' Catholicism and that they had the responsibility of "saving" them. In the language used by Garcilaso, this phenomenon is evident:
And it is no wonder that the same ignorance would take place in such diverse parts and among different nations, because the naiveté of the Indians of the New World, regarding the things they did not know, was everywhere the same. Any advantage the Spaniards had over them, such as being able to ride horses, taming cattle and till the land with oxen, making mills and arch bridges over big rivers, shooting with an archebus and killing from a distance of one or two hundred paces, and other similar feats they all attributed to divinity, and that's why they called them gods, just like the letter caused the Indians in the tale just told.
Therefore, in the modern age, a historian would read the story of the melons with great skepticism that it is a misrepresentation of what indeed did happen between the Incas and the Spaniards involved. Based on the discourse alone, it is possible to interpret the text as a typical Spanish conquistador response.
It is very important to analyze the story in the text without allowing the discourse to cause a distraction from the deeper meaning. It is quite possible that the story is true, that the Incas involved did believe that the letter, an inanimate object, had a the power to observe and to tell. The interaction that de la Vega describes is a cultural conflict that must have been very common during the encounter. The Incas society was obviously one where things were not recorded using writing and words and the notion that the inanimate object would simply carry the message would be totally foreign to them. If they had never encountered the phenomena of the written word, then it would be preposterous expect them to have known. De la Vega understands that notion: "The Indians, in those times at the beginning, since they didn't know what a letter was, they thought that the letters the Spaniards sent one another were like messengers that said in speech what the sender commanded them to say, or that they were like spies that also said what they saw along the road to their destination." There are many things, even today, which are culturally based and would thus be foreign to someone from a different culture. However, within academia, the skills to recognize those cultural differences and thus adapt to them and respect them are highly developed. However, this story demonstrates a conflict where the tools to decipher the various cultures are not present. One could flip this story around quite easily and say that the Spaniards are foolish because they do not recognize the power of the inanimate objects, that they do not understand that the letter could indeed talk and observe. There are many things about this story which could be turned around. It is highly likely that the Spanish made all sorts of errors because of cultural differences and that the Incas may have even used those differences to manipulate the Spanish in some ways. However, since the history is told from the perspective of the Spanish, those stories are lost. The simple fact that the history has been told from the side of the Spanish reveals a lot about the obvious power dynamics that have developed over time in Latin America.
The most interesting thing about this analysis, however, is the origins of Inca Garcilaso de la Vega; according to Roberto Castillo Sandoval, de la Vega claims to be a mestizo, the son of a Spanish nobleman and an Inca woman. He tried, throughout his life, to balance those two worlds, by living and being educated in Spain and identifying himself as Inca:
Garcilaso was a mestizo (European and Indian) but actively claimed to be"inca" or "indio". In this he anticipated the gesture of many mestizos after him who have been very deliberate about how to portray themselves in relation to ethnic or cultural background. Mestizo identity is inherently dual and can be regarded as oscillating in its allegiances--that's where the motif of the mestizo as "traitor" comes in - according to the circumstances. A more positive view would emphasize the ease with which a mestizo can belong to two different worlds.
What is interesting is that Garcilaso wrote this work as an attempt to counter the Spanish portrayals of the Incas, however, his is still using a violent, racist, and colonialist discourse as he writes, which raises an interesting question. While Inca Garcilaso de la Vega is one of the first mestizos and in that represents the future of Latin America, why does he use such strong language? Does he represent the future of Latin American discourse on their own ancestors? Do Latin Americans still identify themselves as Inca, Mayan, Aztec or any other indigenous group while using such strong racist language to describe those groups? Of course de la Vega cannot answer such a question himself nor can this essay begin to touch on that issue. That is the question that the story of the melons and its author raise.
At first glance, de la Vega presents a very simplistic superficial and racist few of the Incas in his representation of them. However, he himself is half Inca and half Spanish and attempts to bridge both cultures. In his writing he has tried to replace the Spanish reports of the Incas with his own but in doing so, uses a racist language. Through that language, he tells the story of the use of cultural conflict in the dynamics between the Spanish and the Incas. However, the question then arises as to de la Vega's role in history.
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