Antes del mestizaje: los ‘dos nuevos mundos’ de la conquista de Chile

Abstract

The new world presented in the letters of Valdivia and in the chronicles of his companions is a world of Spaniards struggling for power by conquering territories and winning royal favour. In these writings, the indigenous peoples are slaves, foes, or objects of ethnological interest. Neither the letters nor the chronicles, however, were edited until the mid 19th and 20th centuries. Rather, a knowledge of the conquest of Chile first reached the reading public through La Araucana. The exceptional success of Parts One and Two ows to the presentation of a new world accessible to the reader because of the projection of lite-rary models then widely known. Moreover, Part Three presents a state before the conquest, describing another new world, and offering the possibility of yet another cultural encounter.