New Direction for the Arrows and Swords
Jose Humberto
Rodriguez Seas
is an educated man. A graduate of the University
of Autonomy in Guadalajara,
Mexico, he went on to
receive his post-graduate degree in medicine at the University of Miami.
He headed the medical section of the University
of Costa Rica and was the vice-consul
of Costa Rica in Guadalajara. And these
are just a few of his credentials. But besides being an educator, Sr. Seas
is also a man of passions, including writing. He has recently written a book,
“La Flecha y la Espada”, about another of his passions, an accurate portrayal
of the treatment of the indigenous peoples of Costa Rica by the Europeans who
first arrived in The Americas. Using no less than twenty-three reference books,
Jose Humberto has succeeded in presenting a scholarly text that is very
readable for the casual reader. I have studied the Mayan civilization for more
than two decades and read books such as “1491” so I have a good base of
understanding of the subject matter but I still found the book full of
interesting material and I think the flow of the book, along with its “voice”
lend to its success.
The book is also
full of facts and viewpoints. I did not know that Ponce de Leon, for example,
discovered the Gulf of Nicoya or that the country of Panama was
originally called Tierra Firme, or the history behind the naming of Cartago. I
also had no idea that there was such an early faction of Austrians and Portuguese
here.
The real insight
in the book, however, is the view of the author: pointing out that very few of
the indispensible native guides were even named in any of the diaries or
letters of the explorer/conquistadors. Equally revealing come in particulars
like the Catholic priest Estrada Ravago dubbing himself the “apostle warrior”,
a mouthful in just two words. But these were the guys who would read their
proclamations to the Americans that they were now under Spanish rule in Latin
or Spanish to indigenous people who did not understand either language, and usually
read them from a safe, peripheral distance from the villages, or even from
their boats before disembarking. The indigenous people here were ready and even
happy to embrace a new god, the one the missionaries were toting on a cross,
but were also perplexed as to why the priests showed no interest whatsoever in
their gods. Make no mistake; Sr.
Seas is ready to point
out that not all the indigenous peoples were pacifists. The Couto tribe, for
example, lived in heavily fortified pueblos, with the decapitated heads of
their nemeses on proud display, certainly a barbaric, albeit effective,
practice by Euro-standards.
The hunger for
power and more importantly, control of the mythical gold cities prove to be one
of the strong driving points among the conquistadores, so it comes as no
surprise that the Spaniards were fighting among themselves at least as much as
they were defending themselves from ‘the locals’, who at times were more than
willing to relocate to more desolate sites rather than deal with the Europeans.
Sr. Seas’ passion for writing shines through
especially in his great scenery and nature passages, as the landscapes come to
life through his written words, granting the reader a glimpse at some of the
first Costa Rican travelogues, a wonderful glimpse of Costa Rica during the
Sixteenth Century.
La Flecha y la
Espada is available in Playa Tamarindo at Jaime Peligro Book Store.All comments concerning this article are gladly welcome.
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