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What does it mean to refer to a corpus of diverse sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Latin American chronicles as "mestizo discourse" or as defined by a "mestizo rhetoric"? In this paper, I analyze, from a metonymical and critical perspective, Libro X II from Códice florentino by fray Bernardino de Sahagún, to answer, at least, part of that question. My goal is to show how this book, and specially its beginnings, points out the ways in which a mestizo rhetoric takes form and functions, due to the uses of transposition, metaphors and authorship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes that the colonial discourse by Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, the Official Chronicler of Indies in the first half of the 16th century, takes in contact with certain pre-Columbian indigenous expressions of the Caribbean and Central America. In particular, we focus on the representations that the chronicler creates about the areíto, or Indian feast, the most indescribable and incomprehensible manifestation among their practices. I propose that, in presence of the areitos, Oviedo's colonial discourse becomes brittle and contradictory, plurivalent. Thus, to approach the symbolic level of the Historia General j Hatural de las Indias, I utilize a literary-critical perspective together with the help of the study of some information provided by ethnography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]