After reading Lieutenant Nun, for the first time in my life I found myself almost rooting for a colonialist. I could not help but be utterly impressed by the success of her transformation into a soldier and conquistador and must admit that as I read this story my mind was tempted to see Catalina de Erauso as a hero. I think that the almost fictional way in which the story is written makes it easy to get lost in how surreal the events were. Her bravery is undeniable, and the unlikely encounters with family make for a fascinating tale. Ultimately however, as Michele Stepto and Gabriel Stepto point out , she too was “a perfect colonialist, manipulative, grasping, and at moments out and out bigoted.”
Reflecting a bit on how I reacted to this memoir and how at times I wanted to see de Erauso as a hero has made me further understand something I could never quite come to grips with; Why in our society do we ever glorify colonialists? You see, having grown up in a household in which colonial figures were almost exclusively vilified and certainly not presented to me in a positive light through adventure, I could never understand how or why one could possibly see a colonialist as an outright hero. Now after having read this excerpt, I can start to see how if one was being taught that these figures were indeed good, and were then presented with such a seemingly compelling story one could learn to love these characters. While I am not justifying this rational and still disagree with the notion that any of the colonialists could be “heroes”, I think this realization will help me further understand why there are such disparate views on Latin America and colonialism.
I understand wanting to root for a colonialist while reading this story. I think it was like you said, the way the story was told, and that we always want to root for the underdog in stories.
Very cool perspective! Yeah. I guess Erauso’s story is admirable only because she was a woman doing male-conquistador things. If the same diary was written by a male conquistador, and had no underlying gender/transgender themes, I’m sure we would have just eye-rolled at another violent and oppressive colonizer. Nice post!