ama of New Spain, we can be q

uite confident that the role of Cortes/conquistador would have be
en enacted; either Onate himself or an actor-soldier acting in his

Front Desk:place would
have played the

role. Through

this comedia, then, Onate is able to act both in the name of the monarch and, more importantly, in the image of Cortes. Following the comedia, Onate delivers the Requerimiento. We remember that the Catholic monarchs in 1512 had mandated the reading of the Requerimiento upon entry into the land to be conquered, to systematize and articulate royal claims on new territory and its peo

ples as grounds for just war. By 1598, the Requerimiento has been substantially edited. More text is devoted to its evangelical mandate and mission

and

less t

Division to Contact:

o threats of war. Here On

ate cannot quite repeat Cortes. But th

e many conquests enacted by Cortes's

generation have been

distilled into this "new-improved" text; the

Requerimiento signals a cont

inual bureaucratization of wa


rfare, w

hich doe


s not so much r

eplace conqu

est as displace and defer it. Once these words are s


  

poken, the land and EMRTCall its peoples th

New Mexico Tech/ereaf
ter belong to S
pain; all future