THE ABORIGINAL ENCOUNTERS THE CONQUISTADOR


 judgement be passed. Ovando cannot pass judgement on himself, for, as it
 is to be expected, he loves himself beyond measure. Such a love is a worm
 asleep in every heart, and must never be awakened; such a love lies like
 kindling in every heart, and must never be lit. (82)

 The Aboriginals do not forgive the conquistador, but they have the ability
to empathise with him in spite of his bestial nature. They recognize that he
is only what all humans have the capacity to become. This willingness to
comprehend his behaviour turns the equation around so that the conqueror
is the one to be pitied and the sufferer admired.
 Kincaid has stated that injustice is not rooted in race relations so much
as it is in power politics (Wachtel 70). Any individual or group, given the
right circumstances, is capable of abusing power. In a 1990 interview the
author likens history to musical chairs, and explains that in writing "Ovando"
she "was trying to understand how for some people who found themselves
sitting down it would become important to try to remove the apparatus for
the game to continue- so that they would never again be standing up" (Perry
501). What this implies is that having found themselves the victors, Western
Europeans worked at freezing time, in a sense: controlling the course of events
to maintain the position of power that they held in that moment in history.
In Kincaid's other works we have seen West Indians struggle against the
dominion of the coloniser or slide into a life of resentful misery. However, in
this story the underdogs are grounded by their old-world vision; they refuse
to play the game or to let the victors' sins "obsess and so possess" them
(83). Perhaps it is only in the distant past that West Indians might identify a
way out of the debilitating cycle that history has put in motion.