new readings on the earliest relaciones of the new kingdom of granada (1539-1550): authors, debates and central themes

This article deals with the relaciones from the earliest Iberian expeditions to the New Kingdom of Granada, with an special emphasis on those written by Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada and the captains of his troop. Although these documents have been used as sources in various historical and anthropological studies, a balanced approach to this matter, in the light of a new set of questions that dialogue with the most recent historiography of the Hispanic and Latin-American world, is still required. Without being exhaustive, this article aims to contribute to that purpose by using textual analysis of published primary sources and secondary bibliography. The genesis of the relaciones was conditioned by the imperial center’s demand for information, the conquerors’ interests, and the mediation of official chroniclers and cosmographers, in particular that of Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, who collected and used relaciones widely in the second part of his Historia general y natural de las Indias. Several discursive topics that reappeared, and were more extensively dealt with, in local chronicles since the end of the 16th century were prefigured in this corpus, such as the abundance and strong spirit of the New Kingdom of Granada, the depiction of Jiménez de Quesada as its legitimate conqueror and of muiscas as a peaceful, populous, and economically profitable people.