How did you connect with the Oviedo Project? 

Michael Aronna and Lizabeth Paravisini were a tremendous influence on my artistic and academic work as a student, when I was exploring themes of movement and memory as they related to my maternal family’s conception of the Dominican Republic. Their recommendation that I work on the Oviedo Project was an amazing opportunity to deeply engage with a record of Taíno cultural practices, as well as with the geography, flora and fauna of the island we know as Hispaniola or Quisqueya.

It was also incredibly validating to be able to work through this academic process that was contingent upon knowledge and cultural insights that were deeply personal to my family. My mother was raised in Guanajuma, in the mountains near Jarabacoa. She was already intimately familiar with the information documented by Oviedo in his descriptions of Taíno architecture, having grown up with a bohío as part of her childhood home. My family there, like many families in the Cibao region, still builds their wood– and charcoal––burning kitchen in a bohío for the superior air circulation and ease of access to their conuco.

I was able to call on my mom for advice when I struggled to understand or translate something as it had been transcribed in Oviedo’s text, and found myself learning things about her upbringing that I don’t think would have come up in our day to day conversations. I had some challenges finding good translations for the different vegetation used for the roofing materials in a bohío’s construction, and when I asked her about a part of the palm tree known as yagua, she explained how when cut from a tree and unrolled, the yagua becomes an impermeable sheet, and stressed to me how valuable it is for weatherproofing a structure. (A tangent: In discussing this she remembered using the yagua to slide down the mountainside–– this is how she would go sledding before ever having seen snow, and something she hadn’t thought about in many years).

To include my mom’s experiences and knowledge in this academic process and to deepen my own relationship with this history through our conversations was important and special.

What have you learned from the experience?

My engagement with the text allowed me to better understand the interplay between cultures in the Caribbean–– and better recognize the practices that had been adopted by European colonizers through their interactions with native American and African cultures in the region.

For so many years, this document has been omitted from academic discussion due to a lack of linguistic accessibility. Particularly in the context of Hispaniola, so much of this early history is occluded by academic discussions that are more immediately accessible–– the brutality of the conquest, the revolutions of the 19th and 20th centuries. The existence of this work, and the conditions that have informed its obscurity, gave clarity as to why I struggled as a student to deeply engage with the formation of Haiti and the Dominican Republic in comparison with histories that have greater representation in the existing literary canon.

In discussions of Caribbean history there is a pervasive narrative of indigenous extinction and European domination. Through Oviedo’s observations, originally intended to inform a project of colonization and resource extraction, a critical and rich record of traditional medicines, architecture, and more has been preserved–– giving light to the relationship with the land maintained by the peoples of the Caribbean across time. The rigorous documentation of Arawak and Taíno culture and history granted me as a reader the opportunity to recognize the survival, evolution, and cultural transformation that has been undertaken by peoples of first contact with European colonization.

It was incredibly valuable to participate in this process, and to take tangible steps towards decolonizing historic interpretations of the Caribbean by increasing access to a primary source for those who will come after me.

What have you found most challenging and/or intriguing about the translation work?

In Oviedo’s lifetime, the idea of Castilian Spanish was just beginning to solidify, and much of the vocabulary and spelling in this text required me to look to Italian and Portuguese dictionaries, as well as historic texts of the era in order to understand the spelling and vocabulary in this text. It was a humbling reminder of how much the Spanish language I know has been transformed over the centuries by those who came to speak it in different geographic and cultural contexts–– to see where vocabulary that is Arabic or Taíno, or Yoruba (among many, many other linguistic traditions) has come to transform language that is perceived as Romantic or Iberian in origin.

The working process was accessible to my brain in ways I hadn’t expected. It was like a game to work through each page, and reminiscent of my childhood experiences translating between non-English and non-Spanish speaking members of my family (something that is second-nature to many people raised in multicultural homes). Due to the differences in grammar between the two languages, a sentence that could be a few lines in English could easily span across half a page in Oviedo’s Spanish. It was a challenge to condense Oviedo’s words through translation, and to maintain the integrity of Oviedo’s language as well as the choices made by the many people who worked with him to transcribe this information.

Oviedo’s process of dictating and reciting his experiences to scribes means that as a reader, you don’t know where a sentence is going to take you - every page becomes a journey. In working silently on words that were originally spoken it was difficult to grasp the phrasing and context of the words, and so I was fortunate to be able to read aloud and work through the ambiguities of the language I encountered with Jorge Gruber ‘18. His experiences with both Iberian literature of the 16th century and his extensive work as an interpreter were a tremendous help in understanding the differences between my personal Spanish and that of Oviedo.

What do you perceive as the contributions the Oviedo Project can share? How do you anticipate other students and scholars may connect with your work?

This document is a grounding force to discussions of history in this region, which is particularly vulnerable to climate change and extreme weather events that put the longevity of both native biodiversity and man-made structures at risk. Expanding access to Oviedo’s text will go a long way in facilitating lines of inquiry that work to accommodate and center contributions of people who have been historically excluded in scholarship regarding this period in the Caribbean.

As a student, I worked with art history professor Andrew Tallon in a consideration of the transformation of European architectural modes within the context of Latin America. We were particularly interested in the colonial zone of Santo Domingo, where the expertise of indigenous and African craftspeople informed the building practices required by the available materials, as well as the creation of the motifs found within the facades and frescoes in structures such as the Cathedral of Santa María la Menor.

At the time, it was a challenge to identify and document these distinctions, due to a lack of access to primary sources such as Oviedo’s text that would have allowed for a more comprehensive and definite analysis. I found myself poring over church archives held by the Archbishop as I could reliably find census records to inform my work, but lacked documentation that would give context to the physical and social environment in which these structures were being built. The thoroughness with which the vernacular building practices of indigenous peoples are described by Oviedo, as well as the careful illustrations of native flora and fauna included in this work are invaluable to understanding life in the Caribbean at the start of the 16th century.

I am excited to see how the broader publication of the effort to translate Oviedo’s text will transform conversation and scholarship about the Caribbean, as access to this text expands the historic canon.

Your translations are published digitally, and will be a print publication eventually as well. What are you thoughts about how offering Oviedo’s work in multiple formats might affect/change access to, work with, and experiences of the work? Any thoughts/experiences from your own experiences with digital and/or physical primary sources, from this project or others?

On a personal level, the experience of working on a project accessible in digital format was incredibly meaningful as it allowed me to share in an academic process beyond Vassar, and show my family the work I was engaging with in a much more direct way. It feels similar to my work on Mapping Gothic France, where I was tasked with supporting an effort to condense immense cathedrals into a virtual format. Here, this monumental text can become a site for readers to explore in its own right.

I think there is tremendous power in providing both digital and printed materials for readers and researchers who will come to this text with different needs internationally. Both formats will prove valuable to scholarship as people access this work in different contexts that require portability or access to this text independent of connectivity to electric and internet infrastructure in a given location. Digitizing this project will allow for a longevity to this effort that extends beyond any number of print editions–– and will facilitate the process of incorporating this information into searchable reference tools. I also look forward to seeing the wonderful and detailed illustrations that are found throughout this document in a printed format.

Interview conducted by Carollynn Costella, History and Multidisciplinary Librarian