Season 3 - Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca

Back in the first episode of the first season of this podcast series, I begged someone to make a movie about the wanderings of Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and his three companions.

Well, as several of you pointed out, someone actually has made this movie. In 1991 Mexican filmmaker Nicolás Echevarría created a really striking and kinda trippy art-house film that actually does a pretty good job capturing the surrealness of Cabeza de Vaca’s adventures.

But it’s not an easily digestible film. And in its strangeness, it partly obscures the facts of what happened.

Join us this season as we retell Cabeza de Vaca's implausible tale. And join us as we try to understand what exactly Cabeza de Vaca hoped to accomplish in writing out his story…and what he thought the material and spiritual legacy of his incredible journey should be.

Selected Bibliography

Adorno, Rolena and Patrick Charles Pautz. Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (1999).

Barr, Juliana. Peace Came in the Form of a Woman (2007).

Boyd, Carolyn. The White Shaman Mural: An Enduring Creation Narrative in the Rock Art of the Lower Pecos (2016).

Boyd Carolyn. Rock Art of the Lower Pecos (2013).

Cabeza de Vaca, Álvar Núñez, translated by Fanny Bandelier. Chronicle of the Narváez Expedition (2002).

Chipman, Donald. “In Search of Cabeza de Vaca’s Route across Texas: An Historiographical Survey” (SWHQ, October 1987).

de la Teja, Frank. Discussing Cabeza de Vaca on Texas State University’s Website.

Echevarría, Nicolás. Cabeza de Vaca (Film, 1991).

Frankl, Viktor. Man’s Search for Meaning (1946).

Herrick, Dennis. Esteban: The African Slave who Explored America (2018).

Krieger, Alex. We Came Naked and Barefoot (2002).

Lalami, Laila. The Moor’s Account (2014).

Maxwell, Clayton. “On the Trail of Cabeza de Vaca, Texas’ First Travel Writer” (viewed July 6, 2020).

Newcomb, W.W. The Indians of Texas: From Prehistoric to Modern Times (1972).

Olson, Donald W., Marilynn S. Olson, Russell L. Doescher, Lance L. Lambert, David E. Lemke, Angela M. Carl, Ross Johnson, Sandra D. Smith, and Kent H. Trede. “Piñon Pines and the Route of Cabeza de Vaca” (SWHQ, October 1997).

Reséndez, Andrés. A Land So Strange: The Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca (2007).

Stockdale, James Bond. “Courage Under Fire: Testing Epictetus’s Doctrines in a Laboratory of Human Behavior” (1993).

“Through the Eyes of the Explorer: Cabeza de Vaca on the South Texas Plains.” TexasBeyondHistory.Net (viewed July 6, 2020).

Wittliff Collections (Texas State University) exhibition on Cabeza de Vaca (including a digitized copy of an original 1555 edition of La Relacion.).