It strains my credulity to believe that the memoir is an autobiography rather than a work of fiction.  The coincidences, like meeting relatives all over the place and sailing to the New World to be a soldier under her brother whom she eventually kills unknowingly, strains the imagination.  One reviewer pointed out, “Catalina’s memoir is written after Catalina is publicly acknowledged as a celebrity, and the tone of her story is boastful bravado.” She wrote her memoirs sometime between 1626 and 1930 in the “picaresque novel” style popular at the time, in which a downtrodden person becomes a swashbuckling hero. A NY Times review pointed out, “Bodies pile up with alarming frequency in her story, often for no more reason than that the victim insults de Erauso over a game of cards. By the time she gets to the 13th murder, de Erauso herself seems to be thoroughly deadened. ‘I fire one of my pistols and someone goes down’.”  All in all, I consider the memoir an entertaining work of primarily fiction.

I have always wondered why former Spanish colonies today are underdeveloped compared to advanced nations and I think I finally understand why. Basically, the Encomienda system and the Caste system created structural rigidities which made the Latin Americaneconomies resistant to change.  The colonies exported mainly agricultural and mining products to their masters in Europe. So whenever there were technological developments worldwide with the advent of Industrialization, the colonies did not readily adopt these new developments. Rather than using modern and intensive agriculture, they merely developed unutilized lands given to landlords under the Encomienda system.  Profits were used by the elite for conspicuous consumption rather than for reinvestment and technology as was happening in the US and England. The majority of the people were struggling for survival and did not have the necessary skills required by industrialization. In short, there was a “vicious cycle” of low productivity, low investment and low skills which results in low productivity.  In my mind, this is the major reason virtually ALL former Spanish and Portugese colonies to this day are underdeveloped compared to the more advanced nations of the world.

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