Formacion de la expresion fronteriza del septentrion novohispano: Siglos XVI-principios del XVIII.

Abstract

The idea of the North, codified since the Old Testament as an empty space, also appears with this distinctive feature in the context of the northern border of New Spain. This notion of an empty space to the North presents a negative/positive signification that is homologous to the pair North/South. The process studied here involves the inversion that occurs on the northern border of New Spain. The study begins with the negative codification of the North expressed in the voyages of the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, and follows its transmutation into its opposite in the optimistic hyperbole of Eusebio Francisco Kino. The processes of inversion in the systems of the fictionalization of the border territory to the north of New Spain are analyzed between these two extremes. The analysis begins with the naming of the first islands discovered by Columbus, where the analogical transportation of an East-West hierarchal system appears. Later in New Spain Hernan Cortes' foundation of Segura de la Frontera delimits a border zone to the south that carries the negative connotation of his failed journey to Honduras. There follows a process of inversion toward the North that is made concrete in the significant "California", the name given to an island of fabulous riches in Las Sergas de Esplandian. When the cortesian expression is later inverted in Cabeza de Vaca's Naufragios, the expression precipitates into a wholly fictitious character. This course continues later in Fr. Marcos de Niza with his journey to Cibola. Then in Gaspar de Villagra there is a movement from the profane to the sacred. Ultimately in Kino we find a utilitarian concept that annuls the previous mythical codes, thus determining a restructuring of the word. Within the tempo-spacial framework established in this dissertation, the process that appears in the texts is shown systematically, fulfilling the objective of this work, i.e., the study of the formation of the system of expression of the northern border from the sixteenth century to the beginning of the eighteenth.