The Araucana

Spain's colonizing of the Americas inspired a number of verse histories, the finest of them Alonso de Ercilla's La Araucana. Having served as a page to Philip II from the age of 15 until sailing for Chile six years later to help subdue a rebellion among the indigenous Araucans, today's Mapuche, Ercilla returned home not only with admiration for the Indians, but with serious misgivings about their mistreatment by the Spanish. The resulting account of his experiences, composed over two decades and richly embellished with many of the adornments of classical epic, is sufficiently nuanced to be taken, on the one hand, as the Urtext of Chilean nationalism, which it remains to this day, and on the other as a glorification of Spain's imperial ambitions. Ercilla's Araucana is eminently readable, frequently engrossing, and unexpectedly moving, its author's lively intellect and ready compassion never far from view.