The Indian Chronicles

by José Barreiro

This is a novel about American Indians discovering the Europeans. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1558850678
• ISBN13: 9781558850675
• Release Date: September 1993
• Publisher: Arte Publico Press
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.7" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

the 'real' story

needed this book for a class at my university on indigenous people of north america; can't tell you how many times i wanted to cry and laugh and scream at the same time. it is a translation of a primary document, a piece of history that many do not see. we only hear one side of the story; columbus'. this puts that 'HIS-story' to the test and unfortunately, columbus fails. diego colon's story tells us what really went on when those ships landed.

a trip back in time with my people

as i first opened the book and read the basis of where the data was aquired i was awestruck and knew that i was not only going to read this book but live it through the eyes of my parents and of their parents before them . you cannot help but feel the agony as diego recalls the events that he has witnessed throughout his life both those of curiousity for these strange men and the terror the and destruction they leave in their wake . but human beings from all races have in them an indomitable will to survive , and in this book you will witness that and say a prayer to whatever power you happen to believe in . Thank GOD .

An experience of enlightment in terms of the "Discovery"

Barreiro has done the History lover a favor by making this work possible for those of us who would like to look at the past in a more realistic sense. Of course, traditional History is important, but consider the untold stories that would be missed, like the Indian Chronicles, if all we concentrated on were eurocentric views of a non-euro world. Diego, a character as much modern as historical, finds himself caught between two worlds, the one of his Taino heritage, and the one of the new European world that came with Columbus. What is rather interesting about this book comes from the personalization of the disease, the evil, the corruptness, and the filth that came with civilization, referring to Europe's conquest of the "uncivilized" world. In our modern age, we may look at the past in a nostalgic yearning, but perhaps we should look back farther, as Diego said of his people, where the attitude of humanity was to see the seeds in rotten fruit, not just rotten fruit, or a view more nature oriented than gold oriented, or in our day and age, stocks and bonds oriented. In the Indian Chronicles, we see man's last effort, or one of them, at resistence towards mass assimilation and dehumanation through the eyes of Indian guerillas fighting a lost cause against the growing number of Castillas or incoming Spaniards, different kinds of animals, the type that would have slaves carry back-breaking quanitities of water to a sugar cane field and ignore the irrigation ditches that the natives, "uncivilized" natives, had built long ago, beating the slave for collapsing, while the answer is at his feet. Good book, good read, one of the best quite possibly.