Héroes y villanos del Nuevo Mundo en la <i>Historia General</i> y natural de las Indias de Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés

Modern scholars analyze the chronicles of the Indies as a set of accounts, reports, ways of narrating the lived experiences in the New World, which were tinged with providentialism, mesianism and other value judgments from their rhetoric structure and judeo- Christian pastoral. The Historia by Fernandez de Oviedo (1478-1557) is a perfect example. Although the Historia contains various elements of style that are representative of a genre whose main quality has undoubtedly to do with historiography, it incorporates many allegorical and imaginative levels belonging to a literary textual formation. In this article I shall explore both the construction of a model of Christian hero, and its reverse, as literary figures in the elaboration of a imperialistic and colonial historiography.