More from Piedra (I love his English, I think it is Cuban and under the influence of Golden Age Spanish, but the marvel of it is, it is ultra-perfect English):
To become Hispanic was to acquire “literary whiteness.” The concept of the Hispanic “race” grew in print … but there are Afro-Hispanic writings throughout the colonies that were not entirely “whitened.” Piedra has done archival research on this, and that material is the substance of this article.
Estatutos de limpieza de sangre: you had to present proof of pureza to become Hispanic. Many prominent Afro-Hispanics accused themselves of crimes of faith or lineage so as to come to trial and have them proved untrue. This was so as to get an official audience and be able to defend rights which could otherwise not be brought to court. It was not easy to get declared a “person of reason” — so, all were invited to join Hispanidad, but not to join the elite.
Many of the crimes tried before the Inquisition were linguistic and magical: people were accused of substituting some other form of expression for the official logic and written letter of the law. Ventriloquism serves as a metaphor for the birth of literature in Latin America: formerly, writing literature had been an amusement of the highborn but now adventurers seeking to move up impersonated the voice of the idle rich as littérateurs.
Nebrija was actually against literature, it was too unruly, but the creation of a Hispanic mold for language actually allowed for the creation of literature; Hispanic American fiction was born on the margins of what was officially accepted as grammatical writing. (310) Writers expressed themselves in the imperial language of tactical obedience but this language was in fact “a fictional manipulation of a rapacious grammar.”
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 