La novela histórica hispanoamericana y la reescritura de la historia: Navegantes, historia y escrituras en “Vigilia del Almirante” de A. Roa Bastos
Spanish-American Historical Novel and the Rewriting of History. Seafarers, History and Writing in "Vigil of the Admiral" by Augusto Roa Bastos

Summary/Abstract: The historical novel in Latin America has contributed much to Latin American historiography. Beginning with the earliest writings by chroniclers, conquistadors and priests, writing has served to comment on the reality of our American world: a world of immense complexity, both in terms of materiality of existence and of intellectual life. The article addresses this complexity with reference to a particular historical novel: "Vigil of the Admiral" (1992) by the Paraguayan writer Augusto Roa Bastos. The novel offers a rereading of the life of Christopher Columbus, in which the latter’s biography is presented as an alternative version of that adopted by official historiography. The writer highlights scenes of Columbus’s intimate life and populates the narrative with his thoughts, his obsessions, fears and visions of the future in the crucial historical moment when the relationship between the New and the Old Worlds becomes defined.

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