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Are there earlier chronicles, foundational stories, or testimonios from Latin America where the pursuit, possession, or lack of money is a central narrative engine?

I'm tracing a long historical arc. Before the modern novel, how did chroniclers of the Conquest or writers of the Independence era frame issues of wealth? Think of Bernal Díaz del Castillo's descriptions of Aztec gold, or perhaps foundational fictions (facilones) that tied national identity to land ownership and export economies. Are there 19th-century novels or crónicas where money—whether as pirate treasure, plantation profits, or criollo debt—drives the plot and defines characters?I'm tracing a long historical arc. Before the modern novel, how did chroniclers of the Conquest or writers of the Independence era frame issues of wealth? Think of Bernal Díaz del Castillo's descriptions of Aztec gold, or perhaps foundational fictions (facilones) that tied national identity to land ownership and export economies. Are there 19th-century novels or crónicas where money—whether as pirate treasure, plantation profits, or criollo debt—drives the plot and defines characters?

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By John Koshy Answered 1 year ago

Yes, economic motives are embedded in the region's earliest narratives. In the Conquest chronicles, Bernal Díaz del Castillo's True History of the Conquest of New Spain is obsessed with the distribution of Aztec gold, framing it as a key motivator and source of conflict among the conquistadors. For a foundational 19th-century novel, José Mármol's Amalia (1851) ties political factionalism in Argentina to mercantile and landowning interests. The quintessential example is Alberto Blest Gana's Martin Rivas (1862), a Chilean novel where the protagonist's quest for social ascent is meticulously tied to debt, speculation, and marrying into a mining fortune. Earlier, Inca Garcilaso de la Vega's Royal Commentaries (1609) offers a complex indigenous perspective on the Spanish lust for precious metals, contrasting it with an Inca system of value based on labor and reciprocity. These texts show that narratives of money have always been foundational to imagining Latin America.

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