Borders and Frontiers of Gender: Rethinking Cabeza de Vaca's Indigenous Encounters 1527-1536 (2021)

In 1536, Captain Alcaraza of New Spain met a naked Spaniard who identified himself as Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca. He had been missing for 7 years and was presumed dead, but according to La Relacion, his own written account of events first published in Spain in 1542, something else entirely had occurred. Scholars agree that he had survived the shipwreck of the 1527 Narvaez Expedition, washing up near what today is Galveston, Texas and had spent 7 years living with the Capoque and Chorruco branches of the Karankawa tribe before traveling all the way from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific. Because he survived and wrote a lot, and because he saw himself as an ally of Native Americans, Cabeza de Vaca entered the annals of colonial history as A Savior among Savages: A great explorer who led and taught the natives. But what if that's not how the story really went? This 49 minute documentary examines Cabeza de Vaca's time with indigenous North American peoples through the lens of gender.