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Free write on "Can the Subaltern speak?" "El Requerimiento" and "Como reconstruir la conciencia de los subalternos?" (Spivak, Spain, Kaliman)

Spivak: The Subaltern cannot speak, or at least, cannot "utter" in ways the West/Colonizer can understand.

"El requerimiento:" Letter from the King and Queen and spain to the indigenous peoples of the Americas, to be read everytime the Spanish/Conquistadores established a colony. Tells the story of how God created the world and its people, of how God gave the ruling rights over to el Papa, who in turn granted ruling rights and gave land to the King and Queen. (A circle of self legitimation?) Therefore, all peoples must obey the king and queen, or suffer the concequences.

Ricardo Kaliman: Briefly talks about the intersections between The Subaltern Studies group based in India, and the Grupo de Estudios Subalternos Latinoamericanos (GESLA). Talks about the irony of how the United States (as center) serves to distribute and connect two marginal (periphery) groups that otherwise might not have connected: India and Latin America. Cautions readers that this flow of information might get distorded (through selection, translation, interpretation, etc.) in its way to Latin America. Critique that the US Latin Ame. group, has concluded that "de que tratar de entender al subalterno es siempre e inevitablemente un modo de colonizarlo." This article seek to enter into the discussion started by Spivak, by adding, "How to reconstruct the conscience of the subaltern?" y "como reconstruir una conciencia en general?" He points out scholars are not even equipped/capable(?) of even reconstructing the consciousness of the elite group, of which there's plenty of primary sources. Even when one gathers testimonios, how do "we" interpret and then represent them. Sometimes people lie, specially when they don't trust the ethnographer, at others, the "informant" makes her/himself important and central to the narrative. how the hell you know, given that ethnographers can never enter someone else's shoes when the ethnographer is backed up by institutional/economic power that the subaltern does not have. peace.