The Daring Flight of My Pen

Doomed from the beginning to be read as history rather than poetry, Gaspar Perez de Villagr's Historia de la Nueva Mexico chronicles Captain Juan de Onate's conquest of New Mexico from its inception in 1595 to the battle of Acoma in 1599. In this engaging study Genaro Padilla enters into Villagr's epic poem of the Onate expedition to reveal that the soldier was no mere chronicler but that his writing offers a subtle critique of the empire whose expansion he seems to be celebrating.