The Adventures and Misadventures of the Extraordinary and Admirable Joan Orpí, Conquistador and Founder of New Catalonia

by Max Besora

  “Whilst the aforementioned be veracious,” said Gregorio Izquierdo, “in De indis posterior seu de iure belli (1539), Vitoria himself admitte that natural law prohibits the killing of innocents. Las Casas concurred, in his New Laws (1542), which state that slavery and the encomienda system must be outlawed in favour of a just treatment of the Indians. That an empyre of justice must be established through the use of reason, never force! Roman-Christian law, the Lex romana visigotorum, rejects slavery. In other wordes, the Indians must submit to the power of the King, but war canst be waged against them merely for not being Christians. Alexander VI’s four bulls and the legal justification for the Requerimiento should not presume to sanction any massacre, because tis he who kills an innocent and is unable to admit to his atrocity who demonises that innocent in order to justify his demise. The Gospel leads altogether too swifth to the sword in these lands. And that be indubitably what nobleman Domingo Vázquez de Soja and his vassals did, dispiteous … setting the dogges upon an entire tribe for not submitting to their orders, converting that village into a veritable cemetery of Indians!”

  The women in the courtroom gasped in horror and the men coughed and mumbled. The judges didn’t know where they stood in the face of our hero’s exposition, while the noblemen noted with discomfort that Izquierdo was gaining ground. But their lawyer had a trick up his sleeve and this was the time to use it.

  “Objection! Objection, Your Excellency!” he said. “Be there perchance a witness in this courtroom to the supposed exploits of which my client is accused? Does perchance any man knowe beyond doubt that this soldier, this Gregorio Izquierdo, be truly who he claimeth to be? Who is this solider, who travells with a black slave as if he were a white man?”

  The murmuring in the room grew shriller, becoming a constant soundtrack.

  “Order in the court!” called the judge. “Carry on, barrister, and clarify this matter.”

  “Your Excellency, I hath heard telle that the soldier Gregorio Izquierdo, who today assumes all the riskes of defending himself, is truly named Juan Urpín and a Catalan national, in other words a foreign’r, and furthermore a lawyer by profession,” continued the attorney, smiling triumphantly. “What bee the motive behind this learn’d man travelling through these new worlds with an assumed name? Be he a fugitive? Be he a runaway from prison or the galleys? Who is Juan Urpín and who is Gregorio Izquierdo? Is he, perhaps, a spy for the English or the Portuguese? This matter must be urgently address’d!”

  Our hero, whose face had blanched more and more as he listened, his body sinking into his chair, wanted to die. The crowd in the courtroom erupted in a commotion, each person giving his opinion. He patted down the pocket of his dress coat, searching for the letter from Úrsula Pendregast, but then he remembered that he’d lost it on the high seas. Amid the commotion, Luis Pajares, the native interpreter, stood up from his chair and walked to the middle of the room. The throng, upon seeing his slight, dark figure, was suddenly quiet.

  “Your Excellency, witnesses and jury, all assembled bros & hos: mine Christian name be Luis Pajares and I didst right verily eyewitness all these massacres in the jungle,” he said. “And I doth swere, in the name of God Our Father and the Holy Spirit (can I git an amen!), that Gregorio Izquierdo allways comported with honour and kindness among the Indians, while the enraged nobleman Domingo Vázquez de Soja didst murder entire tribes. Carajo!”

  “Ti’th tlue!” exclaimed Estebanico the Blackamoor, emerging from behind Luis Pajares. “And ath fo’ the tlue identity of the soldiel Gregorio Izquierdo, do not be led astlay by lumols and tlust mole in the tluth of leason: thi’ vely Don Izquierdo fleed me flom a slave ship and celtain death and that i’ what count.”

  After the speeches made by the indigenous man and the African man, the courtroom was dumbstruck. A deafening silence hovered for a few moments over all the shaken faces of those present, until the judge coughed and then murmured a few words with the other judges before speaking.

  “Ahem! Well, this court deems it just to dismiss the charges against the noble criollo Domingo Vázquez de Soja, as a recognised figure of great merit in these regions, with a forewarning of possible charges on crimes and misdemeanours shouldst he commit further atrocities. And we shall adjourne our review of the strange ‘case’ of Gregorio … or Juan whatever-the-heck and his suspected dubble personality, whilst considering in accordance with common agreement to ceast and desist all further crimes and misdeamors. Session adjourned!”

  While the judge hammered out the sentence and the audience bellowed with rage and confusion at that strange ruling, Captain De Soja and the other noble hidalgos didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. And as for our hero, let’s just say he got lucky that time, but a new fearsome enemy had appeared on the scene, as the attentive reader will see straightaway.

  ___________

  104. In other words, with absolute power and jurisdiction over sentencing and punishment.

  Chapter IV

  In which our hero meets a powerful lord who makes him a unique offer, and then encounters the Indian Araypuro

  Our hero was celebrating his partial victory at trial, in a tavern with his friends Martulina the Divina, Father Claver, Estebanico the Blackamoor, and the soldiers Octopus, Jeremies, and The Scourge, drinking a wine made of fermented yucca. After their carousing, Gregorio Izquierdo walked back alone to the soldier’s barracks. As luck or fate would have it, he ran into Domingo Vázquez de Soja and the other criollo noblemen. Upon seeing them, he greeted his opponents, politely removing his hat and even bowing.

  “Quit yer reverences and playacting, second lieutenant!” ordered De Soja. “Today, in that trial—or shall I say farce—you dug your own grave, Don Gregorio. Or was it … Juan Urpín?”

  “I like both names equally, thanks,” said our hero, sarcastically. “But I’m not nearly as fond of hypocrisy and injustice as thou beest, that’s for sure.”

  “Nor am I fond of the Indians and black slaves you consort with as your lickspittles,” said the criollo nobleman, with a disgusted expression. “Nor of bretones105 and wooden nickels like you!”

  “Only the lily-livered extermynate an entire village of women and children,” said Gregorio, starting to get nervous. “Murderer.”

  “That’s an affront!” exclaimed the nobleman, unsheathing his sword.

  “Indeed!” said our hero, unsheathing his, and preparing to duel with that villain.

  The other military noblemen also drew their swords and surrounded Gregorio, and soon a crowd—alerted by the shouting—had formed a circle around the soldiers, hoping to see blood.

  “Halt!” shouted an elegantly dressed man, emerging from the crowd. “Four against one … not a verry gentlemanly battle!”

  “And who in the hell art thou?” said one of the noblemen, pointing his sword at him.

  “Diego de Arroyo, governor of Cumaná, at your service,” he said, pushing the sword away by its tip. “And all of ye be under my jurisdiction and as such I canst send ye all to the clink with a wave of my finger. So … no more insults and break it up!”

  The noblemen put away their swords and dispersed amid the crowd, their faces reflecting their rage, as Gregorio Izquierdo also sheathed his weapon.

  “Second Lieutenant Izquierdo,” said the Governor. “I attended thine trial today and saw thee to be a just and learned man, precisely what I require for the post of second-in-command in Cumanagoto, in New Andalusia. Willst thou accept?”

  “Thy will be done,” said our hero, bowing until his nose touched the ground.

  “Then come see me tomorrow and we’ll do all the paperwork,” said the Governor, and the two men shook hands. “By the way, I forgotte to mention that some fishermen have gotten word from some other fishermen who, in turn, heard yet other fisherman further up the coast say (basically, a bunch o’ fishermen), that there is someone named Gregorio Izquierdo who’s just arrived from Seville to reclaim his treasure. So now we have a fake Gregorio Izquierdo and a real Gre
gorio Izquierdo. Which one art thou?”

  “Yeegads! Gregorio Izquierdo is alive? My real name is Juan Urpín,” confessed our hero, embarrassed. “It’s a long story. Pray allow me to …”

  “I don’t want to hear it!” said the Governor, cutting him off.

  “Wherefor dost Your Grace trust me?”

  “Thou art a man of letters and verily a personage of character,” said the Governor. “Just men are few and far between in these parts and thou shalt be of more use in my service than locked up in jail. But watch it with the whole matter of the bilocation, I assume twill catch up with thee at some point.”

  Having bid farewell to the Governor, our hero, on his way back to the hostel, ran into the native translator who had defended him in court, sitting on a corner beneath a weak streetlight, drinking a bottle of firewater all by his lonesome. He had taken off his white shirt and linen pantaloons and was dressed in the garb of the Guaiqueri tribe, amulets hanging around his neck. Gregorio approached him and asked, “Thou art the translator Luis Pajares, right? I have to thank thee for defending me at the trial.”

  “Darn tootin’! You owe me more than thanks, milord, I need a job after court today or I’ll end up eating wood, since I’m flat broke and only want to tie on a big trial-tribulation with this here hot firewater,” he said. “But mine name is Araypuro, not Luis Pajares. Luis is the name some over-the-top Christian dima106 with horriblis bad taste gave me. I prefer my birth name, if it’s not too mucho to ask. And as for name changes, bam! Methinks thou hath a little problem of thine own.”

  “What cheek!” our hero exclaimed in surprise. “Since when doth an Indian speak that way to an officer of the King?”

  “Come now! I never did meet no injun, I only know Tasermes, Tomuces, Pírutus, Guarives, Guaiqueris, Xacopates, Coxaimes, Palenques, Caracares, and a bunch more who been playing macumba tarumba from long since before you guys showed up,” said Araypuro. “The word ‘Indian’ is something you long-legged hairy moochers use to insult us. Guaquerí or not Guaiquerí, that is the question.”107

  “Thou crosseth the line, Luis, or Araypuro or whatever. But I shall grant you pardon maugre the fact that thou art a malapert Prince of Insolence. However do not forget that, as a mestizo, thine life is worth zilch.”

  “Not this again, bro! I thought you were a good guy, against slavery and all … Or at least that’s what I thought I heard during the trial. Although you negleckted to mention that Bartolomé de Las Casas, in his Twelve Doubts Treatise, demanded abandoning the Indies and returning all the goods you dosarao108 have been fleecing extralegally for two centuries. Granted, that selfsame huevón ’parently sed that ’steda injuns, you should enslave blacks, which isn’t a great look for a clergyman. Yer all a pack of bewhiskered cretinos!”

  “Goodness sakes … don’t push thine luck and be more polite!” ordered Gregorio Izquierdo. “If I had said all that at the trial, I’d right well be execut’d now for insurrection …”

  “You’ll get your comeuppance sooner or later, bro” said Araypuro. “For those very same Laws of the Indies make any and all justice impossible, by authorising our enslavement and suffering, just so ye bearded dudes can throw your little Catholic shindigs. I dost favour a getty as much as the next dude, but your raping and pillaging blotted out the sun. But here, inland, even the most saintly has a scantling of the devil in him.”

  “I must admit thou art not wrong. By the by, how be it that thou knowst so much of laws and letters?” asked our hero.

  “Because I’m a Southerner born in the Old Worlde, son of a Guaiquerí and a Spanish prostitute, the opposite of Inca Garcilaso, who was the son of a Peruvian noblewoman and an aristocratic Spanish conquistador,” replied Araypuro, taking a long gulp of firewater before continuing. “’Course mine dear parents gave me up when I was a baby, for mestizo, left me in a Dominican—‘the dogs of God’—monastery, and I was raised there by servants and educated by a friggin friar with a perfect bald pate, up to the task of any grammarian and extremely fond of nice-looking brown lads. But there were other young lads like me in that monastery and one day they rose up and burnt it down, roasting all the friars. From there, I was condemned to the galleys at the age of thirteen, where I rowed my way over to the New World, which I consider mine true homeland. I landed in Cumaná having fulfill’d my sentence and I enlisted in the Spanish army, but everyone didst give me side-eye for being a half-breed. So I sought out the Quaiquerís, but my father’s tribe didn’t accept me either, taking me for a foreign mutt from Carupa, blecch! Between one syde and the other, I began to fear for my life, so I put down my sword and picked up the books, studying grammar: Latin, Spanish, and some of the languages of my native region. Once I was able to namina109 languages on my own, I put down the books and started working as a translator of the Spaniards.”

  “Thine bisarre story doth certainly bear some resemblance to Inca Garcilaso’s, except thine voyage was in t’other direction,” reflected Gregorio, smiling. “But then, to whom art thou accountable? To the Kingdom of Castile or to thine tribe?”

  “At this point, I’m not accountable to nobody. I couldn’t give two shits about the King of Castile or the King of Cipango. I only take orders from Sir Moolah Ducats and my female-half-moon and billy-goat-sun spirits and the piracucú and all the animals and trees in these forests that make up my world, and which I keep in this periapt hanging ’round my scrag, as you can see.”

  “I see that thine insolence be as sharp as thine pragmatism.”

  “Chumbamenea! That’s because I’m a halfbreed mutt in this wretched world filled with assholes.”

  “Well, if thou desire a job as mine translator, I’ll pay thee for thine services and thou’ll be a slave to no man. On my word as a Christian. One condition: quitte all thine swearing.”

  “Friggin’ jokos,110 as if imposing the Castilian language on us weren’t enuf, then ye cume at us with the oaths!” complained Araypuro, drunk. “There’s no truth in the word of youse bewhiskereds …”

  “Bite thy tongue, Luis! I’ve killed no man for pleasure, and I’m no Castilian. I’m a Catalan. Besides, I consider mineself a just man and I shall pay thee well.”

  “Alabao! You’re not being feezy, right? Cuz my feez are high, bro.”

  “Crikey! Be thou the one in charge now and I’m the vassal?” asked our hero.

  “Giving orders to the one in charge, serving the servant. That be the true obligation between free men,” said Araypuro.

  “Quit it with the paradoxes, Araypuro. I’m starting to regret putting thee in mine service.”

  “Bro, if it makes you happy you can call me ‘Indian’ (or epsilon) and I shall call thee ‘master’ (alpha), and that way your conquering soul will be more assuaged and pious.111 But don’t be a skinflint and pay me well, if thou wouldst be so kind and just becuz, ’kay ’kay? Soun’ like a deal?”

  “Talk less and thou shalt live longer, Indian. And now, put down that bottle, you’re beyond stewed and the Devil bathes in that stuff. Let’s hit the road already.”

  “Yakera.112 But when Imma liddle drunk I doth enjoy my job much more!” protested Araypuro, reluctantly putting down the bottle of chicha and following our hero down the avenue as night fell on America, and their silhouettes disappeared there where the sky meets the earth.

  ___________

  105. Foreigners

  106. i.e. Father in the Guaiqueri language—Chotomaimur, which is very similar to Warao, an isolated tongue still spoken today, by the Waraos, at the delta of the Orinoco, in Venezuela.

  107. Araypuro foreshadows here, by a few centuries, the famous “Tupí or not Tupí” of Oswald de Andrade’s Cannibalist Manifesto.

  108. i.e. soldiers

  109. i.e. learn

  110. i.e. whites

  111. The figure of the mestizo Araypuro allows us to reflect here on the relationship between colonizer and colonized with a geometry of resistance to colonial power and knowledge, and at the same time go beyond the stere
otypical image of the colonized as well as the (false) universal nature of the colonizer. After all, the colonizers were and continue to be a silent minority, scapegoats in the classic sense, subordinate to the dominant discourse of each nation and each nationalism.

  112. i.e. “Okay” in Guayquerí.

  Chapter V

  In which “Gregorio Izquierdo” recovers his true name and begins his new post as lieutenant in the tropical forest

  Under the protection of the Governor of Cumaná, our hero had to be sworn in before the Court of the Indies in his new post, but this time with his real name: Joan Orpí, or Juan Urpín as they called him there, obscuring the splendor of his obviously Catalan origins. Oh, the indignity! Oh, the indecency! Anyhoo, one thing was clear: our hero was already quite used to name changes. Once he’d been sworn in, he set out to keep the peace within the jurisdiction of New Andalusia, which extended from the Orinoco to the Caribbean, through the mountains to the district of Caracas, covering a territory of hundreds of leagues.

  During the months that followed, Joan Orpí and his infantry regiment controlled the forests, islands, and plains of New Andalusia, through rock promontories, gently bubbling springs, rushing rivers, cliffs, sandy banks, abysses, ancient trees, metal beds, salt pans, and thousands of heads of cattle brought from the Iberian Peninsula filled with virus and bacteria that silently exterminated local fauna and flora.