Lucía Miranda, Myth of the White Captive in the Río de la Plata, from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century

Lucía Miranda’s story, the woman who Argentine literature would transform into the stereotype of the white captive into indigenous hands, appears for the first time in Argentina. Historia del Descubrimiento y Conquista del Río de la Plata, written around 1612 by Ruy Díaz de Guzmán. It would later be the subject of historical novels, as the Eduarda Mansilla’s and Rosa Guerra’s in the 19th century. The original story must be included in the documents referring the Sebastián Gaboto expedition to Río de la Plata (1526-1529) and, specifically, the destruction of Sancti Spíritus fort; however the myth does not appear in consulted documents from the 16th century that talk about those facts. I propose to analyze these initial documents, ignored by literary studies, to analyze the rhetorical-ideological operations in the textual genesis of Lucía Miranda’s myth and to verify the persistence of a sense associated with femininity and coloniality that lasts in time, in the successive rewritings of history.