Mer q)wl HE sixteenth-century Spanish literary landscape is peopled with various forms of autobiography: discoverers', soldiers' or conquistadors' memoirs,' administrative reports,2 travelers' reports,3 confessional narrations,4 and-in a realm less pretentious of "objective truth"picaresque novels. Though all of these exhibit some literary aspects, all of these various narrations were first and foremost reports; that is, as Gonz ilez-Echevarria emphasizes