"En la memoria de los que viven": The Boundaries of History in Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo's Sumario (1526) and Historia general y natural de las Indias (1535)

The Spanish historian Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo's first encounter with the Taino areito in 1514, provoked a lifelong process of reflection and reevaluation of this song-and-dance ceremony. As Oviedo gains an appreciation for the areito as the vehicle par excellence through which native communities commemorate their past, he begins to consider the representation of oral traditions within historiography, particularly in relation to his own task as a historian of the New World. Ultimately, Oviedo's reflections regarding the areito and the Spanish romance, or ballad result in his advocating for an approach to the history of the New World that not only takes into account both its written and oral traditions but also relies on the collaboration between the two for its success.