“Mediating colonial marginality and (minor)ity in Isabel de Guevara’s Carta a la Princesa Doña Juana.”

Written in 1556 by one of the participants in the conquest and colonization of the River Plate, Isabel de Guevara ́s letter to the princess Juana is a critical testimony of the time. The value of this document arises from the author ́s personal condition, de ned as eyewitness of the described facts. It is in this way that it establishes the verisimilitude of the narration based on juridical speech. This article seeks to interrogate the binary constructions of colonial/imperial, margin/center, and local/global, upon an examination of Isabel de Guevara ́s letter in a broader Spanish American colonial context.