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RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY

Robert Folger. Writing as Poaching: Interpellation and Self-Fashioning in

Colonial Relaciones de Meritos y Servicios.
The Medieval and Early Modern Iberian World 44. Leiden: Brill, 2011. x + 156 pp. $129.
ISBN: 9789004211094.

Published through Brills The Medieval and Early Modern Iberian World
series, Robert Folgers Writing as Poaching: Interpellation and Self-Fashioning
in Colonial relaciones de m
eritos y servicios applies Michael de Certeaus idea of
bricolage to four colonial Latin American texts, three works that share critical
characteristics with relaciones de m
eritos y servicios (documents describing
service to the Spanish Crown and seeking remuneration) and one reconstructed
autobiography. Reading against interpretations that would categorize such
writing as messy testimonies of authorial deficiencies (52), Folger instead sees
the purposeful appropriation of bureaucratic and historiographical discourses,
reassembled and redeployed to create a legible, and meritorious, persona for a
powerful audience.
In dialogue with the work of Rolena Adorno and Roberto Gonzalez Echeverra,
among others, Folger draws on Echeverras notion of a Latin American discursive
archive, asserting that the relaci
on de m
eritos emerges out of, is confirmed or
contested by, and ultimately shapes that imagined totality of information
accumulated by state apparatuses (15). Chapter 2 more fully develops this
critical approach as it details the bureaucratic processes constitutive of the genre:
the corroboration of a relaci
ons claims by witnesses, the assessment by colonial
authorities of a petitioners worthiness, and the issuance of written opinions
(pareceres) by such audiencias that served as the basis from which the Crown
awarded or withheld mercedes. Folger argues that in compiling and presenting these

REVIEWS

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materials, the relaciones de m

eritos were less procedural documentation, and more
proof of the existence of a perfect Spanish subject, one deserving of privileges
and office (a benem
erito). Miguel de Cervantess relaci
on de m
eritos is posed as an
example of the genres elision of unique individual biography in order to confect
a model vassal. The chapter maintains that the tactical reassembly and interpellation
used to fashion the relaciones de m
eritos derived its source material from increasingly
formalized historiographical works, regulated and frequently commissioned by the
Crown. The claims of the relaciones de m
eritos were ultimately staked against and
verified in comparison to those authoritative texts.
Chapter 3, Tactical Appropriations, examines three works that apply
bricolage to ends echoing those of the relaci
on de m
eritos: Baltasar Dorantes de
Carranzas Sumaria relaci
on, Alonso Borregans Cr
onica de la Conquista del Per
u,
and Juan Rodrguez Freyles El Carnero. Developing out of Folgers articles on the
three texts, the chapter opens with a discussion of Dorantes de Carranzas
prototypical petition. The son of Andres Dorantes de Carranza (who accompanied
Alvar N
un~ez Cabeza de Vaca), Baltasar Dorantes de Carranza produced a hybrid
text that exemplifies the strategic poaching characteristic of the relaci
on de
m
eritos and simultaneously maps out the sixteenth-century Mexican economy
of mercedes (80). While unsuccessful in garnering a merced , and censured by
some contemporary critics for an unfocused and unsophisticated presentation,
Folger maintains that the Sumaria relaci
on uses bricolage to self-fashion a worthy
criollo subject.
The case of Borregan, who was likewise denied compensation, is distinct
in that his work has been read as a failed, chaotic historical cr
onica. Folgers
interpretation looks instead to the sixteenth-century Peruvian conquistadors
material motives, namely being appointed Perus royal chronicler, as the defining
characteristic of a relaci
on de m
eritos in which writing as performance is cast as
service to the Crown.
Freyles multifaceted El carnero consists of two parts, an ethnographic history
of the conquest and a literary section narrating the intrigues and personal conflicts
arising within Nueva Granada. While not a proper relaci
on de m
eritos, Folger
proposes that Freyles work is topical to the genre as it emulates historiographical
techniques and casts Freyle himself as an authoritative archivist of Nueva Granada.
Folgers book concludes with an analysis of Fray Servando Teresa de Miers
Memorias as a vehicle for the tactical assertion of the self, using the discoursive
molds provided by bureaucracy (138).
Writing as Poaching carefully scrutinizes the complex nature of a prevalent
genre of writing from the colonial era to offer a nuanced critical understanding of
its interior and exterior dynamics. Particularly useful to colonial Latin American
literary historians, Folgers book is an important contribution to this growing
scholarly field.

ANNA M. NOGAR
University of New Mexico

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