of values we already hold, of judgments already made, of facts already perceived as facts (631). Tompkins is saying that there are no facts, just opinions. So what each historian calls a fact is really a perspective or opinion. Tompkins’ position on facts is that they are not completely true due to the opinions of the author. With this information, Pratt would agree with Tompkins view about factualism and subjectivity in historical accounts. In Pratt’s examination of de la Vega’s and Poma’s essay, she upholds Tompkins’ assumption. Poma writes an “autoethnographic text” where the inferior writes about the superior and their conflicts. So de la Vega’s essay is the opposite, an “ethnographic text.” Poma, an Incan, does have a form of writing, one that is not common to others, so his essay is filled with pictures and text to describe the accounts of the conquering by the Spanish. With the essay containing pictures, and a mixture of different languages it would be difficult to understand by anyone. On the other hand, de la Vega’s essay is written in the native language of Spain where they will understand the topics talked about. Each of the authors, de la Vega and Poma, view their works as the facts. But Pratt is telling us that history is subjective. As it is seen the superior cultures text was readily available for people to see based on the accessibility to have the text duplicated. Another example is that de la Vega represents the superior culture. So with peoples biases one would conform to the beliefs of the culture that is more like themselves. This is exactly the same reasons why Tompkins did not read any texts written by an Indian, because they were not available for her to read to get an accurate account of the time period since the Indians did not have accessibility to the requirements of writing essays. Also, the majority of people would not understand the text if...
