A female defence of the Spanish Conquest of America: Maria Rosario Romero’s Cartas de una peruana (1792)

Abstract

In 1792, Maria Rosario Romero published a translation of Madame de Graffigny’s Lettres d’une Péruvienne (1747). In this new version, the Spanish author rewrote the original book in line with her own personal interests. Some of them (for instance, female independence and intelligence) coincided with Graffigny’s opinions. However some suspected an interesting change in Graffigny’s message. Both authors disagreed on a key aspect, essentially the interpretation of the Spanish presence in America. The French author criticised the Spanish presence in America whereas Romero justified it. This essay analyses two visions of the conquest of the New World focusing on the diverse ways of perceiving “the other” throughout the different characters of the novel and paying special attention to its main character, princess Zilia. In this way, we will prove that the perception of the other never stopped being dynamic either in space (on both sides of the Atlantic) or in time (throughout the whole colonial period).