Narrative
The Misfortunes of Alonso Ramírez
Infortunios de Alonso Ramírez
Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora · 1690
Synopsis
Alonso Ramírez, born poor in San Juan de Puerto Rico, leaves his island to try his luck in New Spain. An unlucky craftsman, he finds neither a steady position nor fortune in Mexico City and ends up reaching the Philippines, where he sails as a merchant seaman. His ship is captured by English pirates who hold him for months, mistreat him and take him with them across the seas of Asia and the Indian Ocean, until they release him with a few companions on a small boat.
Context
The castaway is shipwrecked in 1689 on the coast of Yucatán; taken to Mexico City, he recounts his misfortunes, which the viceroy, the Count of Galve, has the scholar put into writing. The text, dedicated to the viceroy and approved by the censor Francisco de Ayerra Santa María, appeared in Mexico City in 1690. It was long held to be a fiction; archival research, published since 2007, has established the existence of the sailor and the reality of his encounter with English pirates. A French translation appeared in 2017, a bilingual English edition in 2018.
Who it is for
A short first-person narrative in the old Spanish of New Spain, heavy with maritime vocabulary; an annotated edition helps a great deal.
Prizes and reception
Its author's most widely read text, regarded sometimes as a true account, sometimes as a novel, at the end of a long critical debate.
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