The ship without a pilot, and the sheep without a shepherd, are two of the abiding images of the first two books of La Araucana. Both are intimately related to the nature of kingship in a scattered empire, and to the conflicts lying somewhere between rebellion and full warfare which unite the troubles of the metropolis and its frontiers. While the storm-tossed vessel is ever skilfully steered in Arauco domado, the sheep threatened by wolves continue to reappear, as an isolated Spanish soldier by the fort in Arauco (X. 77) or a stampeding horde of his companions (XI. 5), as a mass of Araucanian corpses (VIII. 49) or a cluster of terrified oidores sheltering from the winds of unrest in Quito (XVI. 58). They are a reminder that even the herded sheep have a tendency to wander, and that the most diligent shepherd cannot avoid the battering of storms. On one level, Arauco domado is a poem very much about the shepherd, García Hurtado de Mendoza. The panegyric of this hero has tended to be viewed as a restriction on the poet; this chapter suggests that it is also an opportunity. It allows Oña not only to praise but also to shape the image of a viceregal prince his protagonist is made to embody, whether as the mobile captain and governor of a turbulent frontier, or the steady hand at the urban centre. Oña’s hero is a man of many faces: the Christian general, powerful warrior and master of strategy to the Araucanians at war is father and protector to the Amerindians who serve; a locus of majesty, immense in reach, to the sickening rebels and wayward soldiers, he nevertheless exercises a mitigated, contractual, clement authority over the Hispanic communities. Both as viceroy and as captain-general, his role is marked by an essential ambivalence reflected in the diversity of interacting epithets which describe him, both Pompey and Caesar or Aeneas, both royal sun and fellow citizen, both executor of just punishment and peacemaking healer. To suggest ambivalence here is not to suggest conflict; it is rather the dynamic tension which gives direction to his power, a prudential balance between extremes which accords a special centrality to the middle course between them, the ‘justo medio’ or Golden Mean. While his cardinal and heroic virtues are standard in the mirrors of princes, therefore, they evolve to fit a subject whose exercise of them meets challenges which are essentially new.
The fundamental novelty of colonial governance is a leitmotif within the poem. Oña’s self-consciousness, his wry dashing of generic expectations and dizzying shifts in mode and style force the reader’s involvement in a work which is ostentatiously in progress. At the same time, its emphases reflect on and forge their path within the broader context of the political debates and literary innovations of turn-of-the-century Lima. Thus, Oña opts for the reformist, experiential and pragmatic model of the Jesuit call to acknowledge both the potential and the pressing need for a renewed evangelisation among the Amerindians, above either the crushing negativity of many encomenderos or the older idealism of the scholastic disputes. His Araucanians, too, are ambivalent, horrifying in their collective barbarity and idolatry, but often admirable as individuals, primitive creatures of nature and exemplars of amorous refinement. The overlaying of past and present in the poetic recreation of Chile contributes to much of this oscillation, as the historical triumph of the joven milagroso is made to accommodate the failures and the promise of the future. Its progressive pull away from epic gestures towards shared identity in a distinct and beautiful landscape which had become a byword for division, at the cusp of the region’s descent into renewed violence.
On another level, Arauco domado is a poem very much about the sheep, turning the fixation of La Araucana on the political community of the other back towards the emergent self-definition of colonial urban society. The complexion of the viceroyalty is shown to be one of distant but connected civic societies, an urban web which is at the same time extremely fragile and volatile, and capable of astounding demonstrations of unity in a common cause. In this light, it is perhaps unsurprising that the immediate reception of the poem in Peru was characterised by ambivalence too, for while responding to the nascent ambition for a republic of letters which distinguished itself from the Spanish academies, its presentation of the pervasive threat of unrest across regions and social strata, and of the complexity of individual loyalties, touched on deeply rooted anxieties. While both the provincial city and the frontier militia are sites for the development of a sense of political community in the work, the city of Lima assumes a new prominence as both civic and military centre, while Europe and the king become increasingly abstract. This attention to the metropolitan collectivity is an important precedent for the subsequent evolution of the epic tradition in the viceroyalty, and is seized upon and expanded by Miramontes in particular.