Resumen de The Conquest of Space in the "Relación del Descubrimiento del Rio Marañón" by Gerónimo de Ypori (c. 1630)
This chapter examines Friar Gerónimo de Ypori’s Relacion about the controversial expedition led by Pedro de Ursúa into the Amazon Basin (1560-1561). This expedition led to the rise of the infamous Lope de Aguirre, leader of the Marañones soldiers and explorers. Ypori’s account intended to understand the unknown Amazonian space through description. In doing so, the writer carries out an epistemological exercise to exert sovereignty over a placethat is amorphous in the eyes of his European readers and “uncovers it” for them. Departing from Mary Louise Pratt’s and Edward Said’s discussions about the close connections between writing, cartography, geography, conquest and colonial control, this chapter focuses on the complexity of modes of discourse and ways of writing that were further influenced by the transition of the Spanish legal and bureaucratic writing models into the colonial space of the New World.
