Acceso usuarios
Geoff Guevara-Geer
In these films that Personal Essay functions much as the relación functioned in the colonial period, establishing a stodgy, well-worn gauntlet through which our two protagonists must enter the new, first-generation world of the Anglo university. Furthermore, and also like an applicant's Personal Statement, the relación is about access to power, a way to become rhetorically "enfranchised through the power of this document [...] addressed to a higher authority." Setting aside, for now, issues of historical accuracy-beginning with that loaded term "Discovery" and continuing through the lost original of this text last seen in the sixteenth century-Zamora reads this text as "an essentially rhetorical composition," meaning that-like Cortés's Segunda carta-relación and like a Personal Statement sent to a university admissions board-it is meant to "engender an attitude in the recipients of the message, conducing its readers to action of a particular kind" (Zamora 22). Las Casas' concern, as expressed in the commentary, is how the Indians were exploited and enslaved by the mercantile Columbus, who during the first voyage repeatedly took Indian captives to serve as interpreters and guides, and for display to the Court as human samples.
