Word: conquistadores
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Shaffer has not fallen into the trap of abstract debate, however. He explores his theme by dramatizing a segment of actual history-the Spaniards' conquest of Peru, and more specifically, the period 1529-1532 and the events surrounding the crucial confrontations between Pizarro the Conquistador and Atahuallpa the God-Become...
...dramatic chronicle of the encounter of the aging conquistador Francisco Pizarro and the young Inca emperor Atahuallpa, however, the play is mechanical, preachy, largely unaffecting and sometimes silly. Ancient Mariner style, Shaffer supplies his own albatross in the form of a narrator, always an ill omen that the drama will be becalmed. He harangues the listener on the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church and the evils of war and plunder. His ultimate theme is that God is dead and life lacks meaning. Royal Hunt is a sort of Tiny Alice shorn of obscurantism and sent to Inca land...
...cynic in Pizarro becomes enthralled by the savior in Atahuallpa, who has a shining conviction that his godhead will raise him from the dead. Pizarro dreads but courts the great Inca's murder. If Atahuallpa is resurrected, might not Christ have been? Through the night, the old conquistador keeps watch over the slain god's body with desperate hope. When the Inca fails to stir, Pizarro lets out a strangled cry of "Cheat" over the corpse as if he had choked down a hemlock potion of love and loss...
...investigated conditions on the rubber plantations of the Putumayo Valley in Peru and found horrors of mutilation and murder even more shocking than those of the Congo. He was a man of passionate idealism and undoubted courage. Joseph Conrad thought him "a limpid personality" with "a touch of the conquistador in him." After Casement resigned from the consular service in 1913, he was caught up in Ireland's seething demand for home rule, denouncing Britain as the "bitch and harlot of the North...
...grande visite was at hand -Charles de Gaulle's much-heralded expedition to Latin America, a 27-day good-will tour covering 20,000 miles and ten nations. Paris papers hailed his "delirious welcome," and one writer even ventured to call him "our national conquistador." He was hardly that. The imposing old soldier was greeted with warmth, admiration, affection. Flattered Latin Americans listened with interest to his subtle talk of common origins and suggestions of a broad, transatlantic Latin bond. But it was clear that any dreams of a Latin Third Force - directed from Paris - were only dreams...