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Jáuregui, Carlos A. The Conquest on Trial. Carvajal's Compfaint of the Indians in the Court of Death. Trans. Carlos A. Jáuregui & Mark Smith-Soto. University Park: The Pennsylvania State UP, 2008. 143 pp.
This is a bilingual and annotated translation of the 1557 play QuerelL· de los indios en las cortes de la muerte attributed to Michael de Carvajal and Luis Hurtado de Toledo. The Complaint of the Indians, is part of twenty-three dramatic pieces about the Court of Death published by Luis Hurtado deToledo. A fifty page introduction to the play, ninety six critical annotations to the text, plus a facsimile of the 1557 edition make Jáuregui's edition a valuable book for research in and teaching colonial Latin America. The Complaint of the Indians is one of the first plays to offer a crirical view of the conquest of America. In line with the long literary Dance of Death tradition, a group of converted Indians denounce the horrors and crimes committed against them by the Conquistadors in front of a tribunal presided by Death. In addition, in the play we see allegorical characters such as Flesh and World, and other figures such as the Devil, Saint Dominic, Saint Francis and Saint...