"Los mitos de la Conquista" | Dr. Antonio Rubial García

Good morning, good afternoon, I am very pleased to be here with you. We are going to have a talk, I hope it is enjoyable, about this topic, which is, as Manuel said, quite controversial. I am going to start with an anecdote, one that I was told by a Mexican, a Spanish told him. They conquered your ancestors and the Spanish woman answered, 'It wasn't yours, mine stayed in Spain.' This anecdote gives us a clear idea of ​​what this burden we have regarding the conquest still is. Let's try to see the complex phenomenon that is. the conquest from various aspects from various perspectives, first I would like you to be aware that the conquest of Mexico and Latin America, we are talking about Mexico, but we are talking about Peru and all of Hispanic America and even Saxon America, it was something inevitable it was something inevitable if not the Spanish and the Portuguese would have arrived, the English or the Dutch or the French would have arrived because Europe was at this time in a process of expansion and America was not.

If America was a continent relatively recently colonized by groups of sapiens, it was barely 12 thousand years old, as sapiens in America in that sense we can speak of a new continent. The Europeans had reached a moment of expansion caused by three circumstances: one, an economic expansion that was required in an economy that had developed from the cities of commerce and those of credit, which required metals. precious metals and those precious metals were one of the driving forces behind the discovery of America. I wasn't thinking about America. They were thinking about Africa. They were thinking about Asia.

Nothing, what they knew, America literally appeared to them. They didn't come across America. They didn't expect. that there was and that and yet what they found gave them enough precious metals to promote this new is the new world economic system that became known as capitalism some time later and was barely in its origins if America is inserted in this process of appropriation of precious metals, which is part of this global process in which we live, so this first aspect is fundamental to understand the conquest with the commercial expansion of credit and, above all, the appropriation of the main means that Europeans had of exchange, which were basically precious metal coins. gold in silver, a second aspect that will also allow us to understand this process is the formation of an empire with universal pretensions.

Remember that the West, since the Roman Empire, managed itself in these universal terms. The Roman Empire had dominated the entire Mediterranean at some point. It lost its possessions due to the Islamic invasion in the West. Remember, the German invasions ended up dissolving this ancient conglomerate, this multi-ethnic and multicultural unit that the Roman Empire, but the imperial idea remained alive in Europe and remained alive when Charlemagne in the eighth century began to try to rebuild. that ancient Roman empire with this idea and it failed the empire disintegrated they divided into monarchies France emerged Germany emerged the emperors or tony of the emperors of the Holy Roman Germanic Empire also tried to reconstruct the idea of ​​the empire it was also a total failure and yet the imperial It was still alive and still alive because in this history of the world we are going to witness processes of universalization and processes of regionalization, that is, universalization occurs from large imperial units that create linguistic units of administration, units in which the transit of merchandise is quite safe, not because in the end empires make war but they also produce peace and this is going to be what is going to generate this imperial idea that is going to be consummated in the 15th century at the beginning of the 16th century with Charles the Fifth, don't remember Charles the Fifth is a emperor that in this idea and are surrounded by a group and a whole collective mentality that thinks that this this empire is the last empire before the end of time moody of apocalyptic this idea that the end of the world is approaching and gender along From the Middle Ages, the idea that before the end of the world there will be a universal empire, an emperor who will rule over all human beings on the planet and a map who will be the angelic father, today we will talk about religion later.

But I want you to keep in mind that this imperial idea is very linked to the religious idea and it turns out that in the head of the Emperor Charles the Fifth Charles the First of Spain and the Fifth of Germany many territories were combined by inheritance or something that he did not plan was planned by his ancestors the Catholic kings of his mother and Juana's parents and the Austrian emperors all the ancestors of his father Philip with his 2 Maximilian of Austria remember that Charles fifth of salaries an enormous empire an empire that covered the entire Iberian peninsula a good part of italy the south of italy sicily some territories in the north that it conquered thanks to the warrior banners it seized and competed with french in the gauls and of course austria of burgundy and flanders the center a good part of the center of europe in germany did not have many many possibilities because Germany was very divided and remember it was divided even more when the Protestant Reformation arose then this universal empire also aims to encompass everything and America is inserted within this idea of ​​a universal empire if it is the obligatory step to this final unification of the humanity under a single head a Catholic king trades metals and universal empire encompasses all humanity and universal the third of the desire for universalist factors that will promote not only the discovery but also the transformation of the indigenous communities that inhabited America is religion Catholic remember that Catholicism, Christianity in general, just like Islam, are religions with universal pretensions, those universal perceptions are, let's say, a consequence of a monotheism we see post-it or to the Jewish people is the amount of Jewish rhythm that expands to all humanity if the The great contribution of these two reviews, Islam and Christianity, daughters of Judaism, is that they consider humanity as one.

Before this, the idea of ​​humanity does not exist. The Romans feel like Romans and the Greeks, Greeks and the others, are barbarians. No, they are not human. 11,000 humans, if they speak and walk, have human characteristics, but the idea of ​​a universal humanity only exists, each town feels like the navel of the world. If this happens all over the planet, when Christianity and Islam emerge, they emerge as religions that claim that all humanity must be saved on their terms and that salvation is to come only if they receive the universal Christian and Islamic message and stage will be what will produce this universality again when the Catholic Church is in a moment of crisis due to the Protestant Reformation and is dividing. the church there are several churches that no longer obey the dad at that moment America appears and America is seen as the solution to this dilemma no the American Indians are going to fill the heavenly spaces left by the Protestants and all the enemies of the faith this idea universal Catholic Christian idea is also a very combative idea, they remind us in this concept that God is a god of armies and the forces of evil are fighting against the forces of good and those forces of evil are represented by the Jewish Protestant heretics by the Muslims. and for the idolaters they remember the great campaigns that were carried out against the Turks from Charles in and then Philip Second, are part of this crusade, the great campaigns that are carried out against England, Holland, etc. are part of this campaign and of course when in America it is discovered that The Indians are idolaters, saying they worship Satan.

The crusade against Satan continues in America and part of evangelization has to do with this. If those three universalizing factors are the trade factor, currency and metals, the empire factor and the universal religion factor, they are going to determine why America exists within this zero of influence and why America enters the beginnings of this global world in which we are living and why the West is the first civilization that is going to impose itself on the planet because we are not China because China is not had these three factors, they did not originate or pretend to be a religion, impose a universal religion, nor did it pretend to have universal trade, nor did it pretend to be a universal empire.

The Chinese spent their time looking at their navel, so it was this factor that led to the conquest. Talk about conquest and generally we It refers to a conquest, not the conquest of Mexico by the titans. We say Mexico was conquered in 1521. This is a big lie. A lie. The city of Mexico, Tenochtitlan, was established in 1521. Mexico as a country took three centuries to conquer and still in the 19th century a of the conquests the spiritual conquest remember a character that the gringos have sold to us in their cowboy movies his name is Jerónimo Mr.

Jerónimo was a Comanche the only thing he had that was Christian in his name was baptized in a Franciscan mission he was the only one who was Christian But it tells us that in the middle of the 19th century around 1860 there were still Franciscan missions in the south of the United States, yes, and this was part of the conquest. If the conquest, then we are going to see it as a set of phenomena that not only have to do with the military, but certainly not The first conquering process is a military process but not only military, there is a fast, there is also a process of pacts, yes, a mix between diplomacy and armed struggle, we will see that when we talk about the help that the courts received from the indigenous communities, the conquest does not It could have been done without the Indians, it would have been very difficult for ten Spaniards, a handful of Spaniards, yes in Spanish and less than 100, they would have conquered millions of people if they had not had the collaboration of those millions of people or a part of them if it still happened.

In Peru, the second aspect and within this, since that military conquest, we must also take into account that there are conflicts between Spanish capital and the Spaniards are not a bloc if everyone has personal interests, there is no concept of Spain conquering, they are not personal, family, clientelist interests. that they are seeking their own benefit, we do not have the case of Diego Velázquez who arrived in Cuba becoming independent from Diego Colón, who was the governor, the son of Christopher Columbus, the governor of Santo Domingo, yes, and the same thing that he did with Diego Colón, he did it politely with him.

Not later, Garay said that he was governor of Jamaica, he had also become independent from Diego Velázquez and was looking for lands to expand due to the panic and then we will see how Cristóbal de Olid, who is sent to South America, Central America, to the famous and good ones by courts, does what Even if he becomes independent from his protector to become the conqueror, then this is a process, it is a very complex process that we cannot simplify by simply saying we arrived as Spaniards and they conquered. If there is a conglomerate of Spaniards with their own interests, a second aspect is that the conquest It would have been insufficient, it would have been very difficult to keep these subjugated peoples if there had not been an almost simultaneous process of colonization colonization that first meant the distribution of lands and Indians in the encomienda and then in the founding of cities, cities that were often in Centers where there was no previous indigenous population stayed in Puebla, for example, or in Oaxaca, or in Valladolid, or in Guadalajara, yes, and populations that were not very outstanding, like Mérida, where there was a poor indigenous town before the arrival of the Spaniards, these new cities.

They are going to be a fundamental part of the conquest process because the conquest, I insist, was not only an armed conquest, the conquests also had to do with the introduction of new technologies extracted from pack animals, the draft with the introduction of iron from the wheel in a whole conquest as well. of a technological nature and a third aspect that we cannot forget is also what has been called the spiritual conquest, that is, the Christianization by the friars. We cannot understand the number of indigenous peoples that there are now in our country, populated towns without understanding the work that the friars acted as congregators of these towns.

The creators of these communities are the friars and there were certainly pre-Hispanic towns. Those pre-Hispanic towns were the basis on which the friars built the new colonial towns, but many times they built them even far from the old ceremonial centers, if they exist. the erroneous idea that the friars always built their churches on the pyramids and this was rather exceptional if towns for example as another scale the current plant was founded in the middle of the four plas caltech as lordships that were in the mountains and great The word al tp means water hill and it was the word to define a town and the town was a ceremonial center a place of tribute that is to say a palace and a market those three elements not the teocalli the tecpan and the 33 no and the tianguis will be the base on which the friars settled but in another place that was not the hill they have in the valley so we have huejotzingo we have a lot of towns that arose precisely in new spaces calling themselves the same as the old towns others like cholula like mexico city Like many of the cities around the lake, such as Tesco and Tacuba, they did settle on pre-Hispanic towns, or like Pascuero, they were pre-Hispanic indigenous towns that continued to function then.

The problem we have before this complex, the process that the conquest meant, is first to generalize. We make generalizations, generalizations that if we try to scratch them a little bit, they don't hold up much and second.We cannot speak the same about a region and say that that region is the same as another, it is not the same. The conquest that occurred in Mesoamerica is America. They are sedentary peoples. They are peoples where there is taxation where they are accustomed to going to sanctuaries to places where there is veneration of gods. where there is a priestly and warrior caste where there is a communal work organization the tequio where there are tributes all this makes the Spanish conquest much faster than in territories where there are nomadic peoples well there are cities where people go hunting and gathering where there are no social and political structures where there are no governments where the clans are families that search for food in extensive territories and are not sedentary or pay tribute and all this makes the conquests totally different.

It is not free that the large and regional centers that are founded In America, the four are founded on the two great pre-Hispanic high civilizations without Mesoamerica and the Andean area is where the viceroyalties are founded because these viceroyalties take advantage of an existing pre-Hispanic reality that worked very well and that continues to function thanks to this. Spaniards use this pre-Hispanic reality to function and of course we are going to see part of this functioning is due to the indigenous allies for both the friars and the

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dors Matthew Remain, a North American researcher published a book a few years ago called the seven minutes of the conquest, I am going to base it a little, obviously expanding on some of the topics to explain to you what was, let's say, the complex process of military conquest.

Then we are going to talk a little about colonization and evangelization, but since basically our idea of ​​conquest is the military conquest let's talk about these seven myths first the first myth is that they are exceptional men they are unique names because we base them because we think they are unique names well because our main source of information on the thinkers documents that we have about their exploits were written by themselves, yes, if we read the letters from cuts auto guava you are I was I did I am very good, we are not then facing relations of merits that tell us about the feats they performed because they are asking the king for privileges exemptions titles that is to say something that did not have the greatest Some of these men are or are not nobody, they do not arrive with one hand forward and one behind, they are noblemen according to them at most and it gives them something, it is a member of the lower nobility who does not have land, someone who had land or who had a position, it is not known.

They came to America to lose their lives. They are very, very poor people or with many ambitions, many of them children of peasants. If they want to be lords here and they want to rebuild here their idea of ​​what a lord should be, a feudal lord without having land and having people who they work because they do not come to work the land, they come to gain the land and with their military merits they are going to achieve that and that is why they crow about what they do. They remind us of the saying that it is not only important to lay the egg but to crow about it.

No, and they are those who make a crow their egg well everything we did already have Bernal days saying cuts he was not the only one there are a lot of conquerors they wanted many things and I am their voice they are relations of merits it does not also have to do with a system Very legalistic, Morgan, everything is a Spanish issue. It has been built throughout the Middle Ages based on Roman law and this idea that everything must be legal, yes, but speaking about legality can be manipulated. We all know that constitutions and laws, well, no.

They are certainly something fixed so legalism is very related to this is not saying polite says I no I did not conquer I made a pact Montesuma gave me his his kingdom this because destroy Mexico we have Twitter because they broke the pact they attacked us we ordered us to attack and I They locked them up in the palace of Axayacatl when we came from peace, we came from very good love, if nothing else they took Montezuma Terry Cante prisoner, the idol of Huitzilopochtli arrived, no, but they didn't do anything, so they are justifying it legally because this conquest is a legitimate conquest, no.

Because you remember this idea of ​​the just war, it is an idea that comes from Saint Augustine. How is a war justified? If someone attacks me, I defend myself to protect the weak. It is another justification of the just war. and we come to free them, that's not it, the just war is behind it, it's legalism, charges are also being requested, the courts are also being requested, the first thing my king says, right, at least he gets to paint general, but he wants to be governor of these kingdoms and prizes, the prizes are lands and encomiendas the encomiendas are Indians so that they work and pay taxes, the Indians are not given the work and tribute of the Indians because the Indians in theory, again legally, are free men, vassals of the king of Spain, forgiveness in theory of people A second myth is that the armies that arrive are the armies of the king, as if the king had not armed, do you think that Charles the Fifth is being armed at this moment in Europe where he is arming multi-national, multi-ethnic, multi-linguistic armies when the sack of Rome in 1537 is looted by the armies of Charles the Fifth there are Protestants there are Germans and Swedes there are Swiss there are English there are French there are Catalans there are Italians everyone is involved there and they leave graffiti in the Vatican and hanks was here with his people who are forming a regular army but Those who come to America are not an army, they are not an army, they are not adventurers, they are people who have their own non-personal family interests, many times they come with their cousins, not the same as always happens, who am I going to call my family too, don't be polite, they are coming. with their cousins ​​when they arrive in the Antilles remember there is a previous conquest in the Antilles when they are in Santo Domingo in Jamaica in and Cuba the first thing they do is call their relatives to have their family nucleus and support each other their desires are two search gold, that's not why the desire for gold gives us the treasure of Montezuma and Gloria.

Remember that all these men are inspired by the novel of chivalry, also inspired by the great feats of the knights-errant who save princesses, fight dragons, don't be, they have a good time. doing feats they go to the crusade that is what their literature feeds them to achieve glory for the future and gold for the present a third myth is that all the

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dors are Spanish yes well not many are Andalusian and the bulk of the army's army in quotation marks of cuts they are from Extremadura, they are all relatives, not the same court as Pizarro's relative, the conqueror of Peru, the conqueror of Yucatán, Montejo was also one of those close allies, they all come from these towns of Medellín, from Trujillo, these towns from Extremadura, not all of them know each other, well the boys, but many of them are, so we have some Greeks out there, we also have Italians, just like those who arrived with the Americo Vespucci colony.

All of these, there are also many Italians who belong to the empire, and then we have blacks, they have slaves, and in battles, the slaves defend themselves. and sometimes they even protect their masters and earn their freedom and it turns out that we have black African conquerors who receive encomiendas yes they receive encomiendas there is a black conquistador who makes a chapel for the martyrs no and no one says that he is black until later some researchers among them discovered that he was an African ex-slave who had been freed and we do not have one or two we have many cases in all the conquests in America in North America in Central America and South America and then we owe it to all the indigenous conquerors that we forget that the The conquest would have been impossible without them if the Temporal Tecas allies were fed up with the Mexicas, the Quarries allies who were marginalized there and the Mexicans did not even let us pass salt, all the towns, those of Chicago, and they have reached pacts with many towns, which is why they could govern.

But not all the peoples were subject to the Mexica, they were with them very willingly and that also allows us to explain why a good part of the armies, if not we could dare to say 70 to 80 percent of the Spanish armies, were indigenous. and not only in the conquest of Mexico-Tenochtitlan in the conquest of the dominions of Tehuantepec in the conquests of South America in Guatemala the armies that Pedro de Alvarado led to conquer Guatemala were Mexican armies exercises that spoke Agua Tica there are still neighborhoods in Guatemala that are They call mexicalcingo if the little one has taken me away because the mexica people that was the conquest and the armies of montejo in yucatan were mostly indigenous armies and the north when the north has been conquered many of the armies of the north are indigenous the founder of querétaro is take an Indian or mestizos and then we are faced with another myth the conquest of 100 the Spanish was not done by the Spanish with a lot of indigenous allies some Africans and other Europeans and then another of the great myths the immediate success was the conquest of Mexico-Tenochtitlan everything the empire fell we say 21 is the beginning of a very long process that lasted three centuries and more what does this mean first when Mexico-Tenochtitlan fall after this famous siege that lasted several months and then they remember two years after arriving he arrived in a thousand 19 he is conquering Mexico-Tenochtitlan two years later it was not easy no it was not fast it was not immediate after this comes the search for metals he does not send his captains to look for areas where they can get metals and allies they do not succeed Cristóbal de Olid is sent to Michoacán and the Purépecha lordships say what is happening to Mexico, Tenochtitlan is terrible, the largest city in Mesoamerica has fallen.

We do not want the same thing to insult each other or to parade an umbrella. With that triple alliance, the Purépecha surrendered in a good way and they became allies. of cuts even francisco tanganxoán he alfonsín gets insulsa he was baptized as francisco no franciscan awards they baptized him the same thing happened with the gentlemen of the scala with the girls and with the lord these eight and three is coconut if all these regions fell like this because they allied themselves with the conquistador but not others and regions, for example in the area, I am still a warrior who still took several decades to be subdued, the thousands of the high mountains of Oaxaca were still causing trouble in the 17th century in Tehuantepec, there are continuous rebellions, not to mention in Yucatán but Either the conquest was not immediate, one of the big mistakes we make when we make simplified history is not considering that this country is a very complex country and it is a country with many and very diverse regions and each of the regions has its history as well as Each of the conquests has its history.

Sometimes it was very easy to insert oneself into the Spanish government when the chiefs allied themselves with the conquerors and of course received Indian lands as a benefit and became Spanish governors of these towns, but other times not, other times the resistance. It was very strong and let's not say further north like when we go to the border of Mesoamerica which is the Lerma Santiago River of this hydraulic complex that flows into the Chapala lagoon and then in the Pacific Ocean it is the border with the Chichimecas more Beyond that border the conquest was difficult and the most important thing was because the Zacatecas mines were discovered and it was necessary to get to Zacatecas and bring the mineral from there in the middle of Chichimeca towns that attacked the caravans, stole, killed, crazy people and it was literally a war of blood and fire that lasted 50 years that conquest is not mentioned when we talk about the conquest of Mexico and that conquest ended up being a conquest made by buying peace by a mestizo captain, son of a huachichil woman and a Spaniard named Miguel Caldera that conquest Nobody mentions it and it is fundamental to understand the formation of this center of the country that is the shoal and from there the pieces from the north followed the same model with pieces armed with visions of real mines with indigenous peoples transplanted from the center again.

The indigenous people colonizing the Otomíes were the Purépecha quarries. That was the conquest of the north in San Luis Potosí. Here, the community is called Las Carillas. The Otomíes were present in the discovery of mines in areas as far away as Cerralvo, Cadereyta and indigenous mulatto mestizos. We are in a process. in which the conquest was not immediate I tell you it lasted three centuries and the other great myth the fifth myth the fifth myth is communication was effective what does this mean what does it mean to communicate communicate first is to have a common code not just a common language without a code common, not all of us here are speaking and understanding Spanish, yes, here we are in a communicative act because we have common codes and a common language, imagine that the Martians arrive not speaking Martian with codes totally different from ours, of course the indigenous people were human and therefore we had common codes like humans but the communication of such different languages ​​is difficult in itself, now imagine Cortes arrives at the Campeche beaches of Bacalar in the area of ​​the current Quintana Roo.

Two shipwrecked people from previous expeditions, one is already completely Mayan, Gonzalo Guerrero. He is already made in Mayan and is tanned from the sun, he has Mayan children, he is married to a mesh and he says, I'm not leaving here, I don't have my life, and in another who was half a clergyman, he seems to say, yes, I continue, there are no more friends. and speaks Mayan and Spanish, of course, they later run into Malinche, not at dawn, La Mancha gives her away, and they see an area where they speakMayan and Nahuatl it seems that their mother language was Nahuatl but a version of Nahuatl and spoken the Mayan language that is spoken of Danish Enacal in a manor that is in the lagoon of terms and that was not the same Mayan that the Mayans who were there spoke. in Quintana Roo much better if the languages ​​have a large number of linguistic variants if we do not know Spanish and we are from the same linguistic family as French but you understand French if you do not know if Italian more or less Portuguese around there I do not There is no Catalan, no, but it is difficult for us to work.

No, that is not what happened with the Mayans, with the Nahuas, with the Zapotecs, with the mystics. There are linguistic variants, sometimes very pronounced. Yes, now imagine these two characters, Malinche Jerónimo de Aguilar, arriving in Totonacapan where the Totonacas do not. They all speak Nahuatl so Totonaco, no, then you have played the game with that broken telephone. This court wants to communicate with the Totonacas. There is no Totonaca interpreter who speaks water. of the water salt totonaco and that happened for the Spanish, imagine this round trip not only being that and ximo but also who knows what they understood who knows what they understood there is effective communication it is usually elementary if not the water which Spanish is a very complex language, extremely complex, there are no variants, there are double meanings, water is an extremely reverential language, it does not say, they have a very funny diet. house and court he took it seriously because for him being in my house is my house yes thank you you are giving me your kingdom so it is clear that this is a big problem in the conquest and it was a big problem later the interpreters remember that there are an Italian saying that if you say translator traditore the one who translates betrays the friars who arrive the process of evangelization arrive and begin to preach in Spanish but they do not know pointing to the sky speaking in Spanish with signs the indigenous people have said these crazy people who are they no they are not walking on horses they walk barefoot, half crazy, we think we sent the crazy people here to get rid of them and it turns out that when those rules realize that no one understood anything, they begin to attract children, they begin to teach them Spanish and they begin to learn, half learn. the indigenous languages ​​but very few very few perhaps some rural person who lived as a child on the street did not arrive as a young man to 9 Spain and learned in water with his little friends playing in the street except molina dura it is not yet most of the trailers did not reach mastering indigenous languages ​​because it was a lot of work for the Spaniards to have a lot of work on TV he says go ahead first of all before imagine the water is full of TV or whatever this is called cuauhnáhuac to cuernavaca there is from cuernavaca cuernavaca or whatever this is called huitzilopochco churubusco churubusco tell him if you haven't had a gunner's ear if you imagine what possibilities there were of communicating with interpreters and the interpreters interpreted what was coming to them and the same thing happened in the conquest very soon some of the little pages that he had with courts that he was very skilled at languages ​​learned waters yes the malinche got rid of a little of the number of people who wanted her to translate truth some authors even polite came to speak taguató but they speak a language it is difficult to speak a language well understand all the subtleties of the language yes the problem communication will be a problem not only in the conquest but also in evangelization and also in the entire future process but of course there will always be these bridges those interpreters not the people who speak several languages ​​and who make communication possible the sector of myths is the devastation and extermination of course here that we have as a source if we read the vision of the defeated this book that had great success has been translated into all the languages ​​of the world it is a book that is in fact a compilation a selection from book 12 of the Florentine codex remember the Florentine codex is a codex that he sent Sahagún to do in his history of the history of the Indians of New Spain the general history and in this book in this codex the last book book 12 is a relationship of the conquest narrated in indigenous terms the book is being compiled in the middle of the 16th century possibly but it ends around 1100 70 80 that is, those who are informing these indigenous people who are compiling the book were children when the conquest were children of the old No one lived anymore, of those who survived, all of them, of course, the vision of the defeated, a terrible vision, it is a tremendous vision, it is not wrong, on the contrary, a very objective vision, yes, but that is a vision, yes, then from that vision, of course, a town is under siege like all the others. besieged peoples of the planet suffer hunger epidemics death devastation is part of the process of humanity humanity we are one of a species that we have conquered each other we have gone from being conquerors to being conquered to becoming conquerors the same Castilian Spaniards will be conquered again or whatever we want to call them, if they had been conquered peoples, that is to say, no, we do not have a monopoly on suffering, all the first conquered people have suffered horrors, it is part of the conquest, it is part of the horror of war, if it starts with the horror of war, then from there We cannot say that the entire conquest was devastation and extermination, not the Spanish came to kill the Indians, some speak of genocide.

We cannot compare what Hitler did in the Holocaust, which was a consciousness of extermination of a people, that is, for ethnic reasons, something that happened. as a conquest and that of course what was least convenient for the Spaniards about Colt is that the Syrians died because they are their workers, they are their workforce, how are they going to exterminate their workforce is absurd, I don't know if this is clear, devastation, extermination If they conquer everything with pieces of extermination, devastation, but Espanyol is what interests them, is that these 100 gods work for them, and what interests the kings is that those Indians convert and save themselves.

Yes, this is clear, then no, the process. conquistador is a process like any other so a terrible devastating conqueror but the greatest devastation did not come from humans it came from microorganisms saying the conquest was a conquest of microbes yes the Americans had been isolated for millennia from the old continent they had become isolated when The Bering Strait is no longer an ice bridge, no more people passed through and these communities of humans who saw America developed antibodies for diseases and America, it is not that there were no diseases here, the great myth that pre-Hispanic Mexico was free of diseases continues as no as no yes all the diseases malaria all the terrible candles of the tropics the Spaniards fell like flies in the tropics not among the snakes the chiggers the spiders the tarantulas the east and all the insects that bit us or that They transmitted terrible diseases to them, the varied crops were first transmitted by mosquitoes.

These diseases existed in America and nutrition in Europe. Europe had also spent millennia creating antibodies for the viruses that were being produced in Europe. Remember that, unlike in America, Europe developed a extensive livestock activity since the Neolithic and an important part of the diseases that existed in the 'old continent' came from animals, avian fever, all the transmissions of chickens, sheep, goats, cows, mad cows, all of these were diseases that existed in Europe especially because of their strong contact with domestic animals that there were not in America, for the America of dogs and turkeys, if it is clear, then of course the Europeans genetically bring a ready-made DNA.

They have just gone through a terrible epidemic in the 14th century, the Black Death, those who died were They died if those who survived inherited their surviving gene to their descendants they do not reach America and the indigenous people do not have antibodies for those diseases in Europe smallpox if you stay cacarizo but sometimes smallpox will survive anyone mortal if smallpox measles all sold that in Europe was more or less in the radical, many people also died in Europe. Do not think that Europe was also free of diseases. No, infant mortality is brutal. Until the 20th century, we can say that humanity is recovering, to our misfortune because there are too many of us, but since that time At that time epidemics were the regular way to balance balance the system there is no lack of food you die halfway yes it is clear then it is not something exceptional either every conquest brings with it these consequences and in America especially because the indigenous people did not have the antibodies to protect themselves from these infections that arrived from Europe the seventh myth the superiority of Spanish the superior Spanish has to do with what weapons and they brought firearms 4 women in tension rifle and the rifles as they were before have to be loaded put in the gunpowder light the fuse not while they were doing this they already killed me no they are not the ones with the machine guns now it's true that I can kill 50 in one go no no not killing one was hard work yes chile you are right that the firearms were maybe they killed four but there were thousands yes the bombardments that were these little cannons that also brought cuts not clear the levels of impact in the vision of the defeated it is said they are not like fireballs that come out of the cannon and burst the tree no and like they burst the being no and They thunder and it smells like normal dust like ash.

No, all the descriptions are terrifying, but they bring two bombardments. Humans, even black people, have beings that are born with a lack of melanin and albinism is something general in all human beings on the planet. It was not an albino or seeing so many albinos is not surprising. They did not realize very quickly that they were dying. They were not gods or that they would be and they died, not the horses, yes, the hair could impact, at the beginning they could impact, it is not encouraged, huge lots were not that big either, so we thought about the horses, it is a little more than a pony, yes, yes, we have the concept of our current average height that due to nutrition and genetics we have grown, no, but if we see, for example, the armor of the Spaniards, about 60 in fact, little dogs, and the indigenous people were walking around, that is, we are not giants, really, if we are before ourselves, it is True, there was a certain impact, let's say, first with the firearms, the horses, the panting dogs, which describes the vision of the defeated, these dogs that were panting and barking everywhere.

Later, remember, the Spaniards used them as weapons of war, but that couldn't have been either. so shocking, perhaps more shocking was the fact that a little the pessimism of the pre-Hispanic vision of the cycles of the cycles end up destroying the world and a new new world comes, a new cycle, perhaps also the idea that just like that, it returned. to take revenge, there is no multifactorial phenomenon, no, but to maintain that there is a Spanish superior, well, no, I believe that disunity among the indigenous peoples took precedence more in the conquest and in the success of the conquest because they do not feel Mexican, there is no concept.

Of Mexico we are going to defend Mexico with the Mexicas they make of Mexico and we do not perhaps turn almost the Zapotecs Zapotecs no and also it was a Mesoamerican zone of continuous wars no nor do we imagine a Mesoamerica as they paint it to us or flower and song everything was flower and I sing we were almost in the earthly paradise and they saw these destroy our inner paradise there were no diseases everything was peace and they were bought it was harmony the people submitted to the Mexica because they would visit them very good they were not kind and if moss well they were not brutal an uprising they were drowned in blood if human sacrifices and all this concept of war holy war war as something that is necessary to capture live slaves for sacrifice are not in a continuous situation of war but rather imagine that they reached paradise and contaminated and they introduced war not if the alliances between the indigenous groups with the conquerors were decisive in the process of conquest, the support that the friars had from the young indigenous people who were educated in their convents were decisive for the success of evangelization and we cannot forget This and a phrase that a teacher said that you have to take it with a pinch of salt but they said that with the conquest the Indians and the independence did to the Spanish the sources that we have for the knowledge of this general era we historians base ourselves on sources no we don't We invent the facts like the literati, our sources are basically sources of the time, yes, but those sources have to be interpreted, we cannot believe everything the source says because the source has a context, it has an intention, it has an objective, if then we can't leave. with the tape that everything he says cut his letters is true we don't have to because he says it when he says it how he says it so that he says it not asking questions to the source is essential for us to be able to reconstruct the facts in addition it is also essential to contrast sources not because a source from one perspective but I do not have the other perspective that is why the information that indigenous sources give us is very rich if the indigenous vision of the conquest is fundamental to understand the process because we have the voice of theAnother yes, if it is clear, is to reconstruct from all these sources an approximation to what reality was, we will never be able to know what happened, forget that, we can get closer, possibly get closer to what happened, yes, sources such as the history of the conquest of Mexico give us that. by Francisco de Gómara or the decades of the new world by Antonio de Herrera, which are sources that are given from the Hispanic perspective, and of course, as we have seen the indigenous sources, there are also Spanish sources that give us a less optimistic version of the conquest.

From the Spanish sources they tell us we arrived we converted to the sites of Christianity Cortese Rocco idols put images of the Virgin everyone was converted and it was not Cortes is the Moses of the new world that is to say why save his people the indigenous people from idolatry but there are other sources Spanish that paint us a quite brutal conquest and the best known and the most common and the one that is most used for this famous black legend of Spain, not that the conquest was devastating, brutal, etc., is precisely the work of Friar Bartolomé de las Casas Dominican Friar.

He was an encomendero in the Antilles He had an encomienda He was a priest The Antilles can give the order and he totally transformed into a defender of indigenous rights He did not travel many times to Spain and wrote several texts about the atrocities that the Spanish were doing in America, among them the most extended, it was translated into several languages, this was the very brief account of the destruction of the Indians where it describes terrifying things that actually happened. No, we cannot sell a rosy story of the conquest like the one that gives us a cut.

What made us manna was not brutal. not the conquistadors, some will be true psychopaths, yes, true psychopaths enjoyed seeing people suffer, no, the descriptions made by the houses of Pedrarias Dávila or other conquistadors are terrifying, not worthy of the greatest horror of humanity, but that is also true, it is the other vision and a vision of the vanquished is the vision of a member of the victors, a Dominican friar, we also have this version of the codices of the codices and of the indigenous testimonies such as the Florentine codex or the narratives that the indigenous people made of the conquest, we have for For example, this codex, one of the oldest million 33, is known as the Codex of Fighting, Penalties, it is a sheet, it is a description of a type of punishment that the Spaniards used on the Indians who escaped or who they wanted to subdue, by throwing their dogs at them. bravos if it is known as the codex of the fight I lie because this is also described by the houses in the very brief relationship it will not be a very brutal way of subduing and scaring us images a brave dog that attacked you and two characters appear above who are cortés and la malinche these two characters are going to be fundamental in the imaginary about the conquest and the imaginary about the conquest and the imaginary about the conquest how the conquest was built, rebuilt and rebuilt again throughout the 16th 17th and 18th century yes because The conquest as a founding fact was not an invention of the 19th with an invention since the 16th, if from the 16th the conquest was elaborated and elaborated and elaborated from the indigenous and Spanish testimonies and from the needs that each of the groups that issued these stories suited them, we have, for example, the indigenous vision of loss.

See here the Huejotzingo codex where it is another type of position. The conquest was very efficient and the bones without gas participated in it. Here is a vision of the victors. and gas if not all the defeated all all the defeated were indigenous and not all the victors were Spanish here the indigenous people are showing in these codices how they collaborated with cuts just like the Tlaxcala canvas because they are asking the king for a list of merits they are asking for benefits, recognition, prestige, favors, not to be delivered in an order, have your own authorities, etc., etc., etc., so how do you have this, well, it's not just the work, we also participate and several of these codices are related to these collaborations, we could call collaborationists like the 19th century. things, the traitor karatekas or the traitor Malinche, not also here it is clear how this message is a message that the Indians come under the banner of the Virgin Mary, they still do not know how to paint the Virgin very well, they notice that she looks like a witch who is hanging to the child and it does not seem like a loving virgin that is how they saw indigenous villains everything is perspective all the perspectives like that indigenous villains the image that Cortes carried who did not know that she was the mother of Jesus did not know anything but he paints her as the banner of Cortes forgiveness In the Florentine it is very illustrated and also has several descriptions of this type.

They have an image of the Florentine with their arrival at the beaches of Chasicó. An image of the Durán codex arrives. Several images do not have the path on the 10th of Tlaxcala. It is very interesting because you look there. For example, the cannons appear, the bombards do not appear loading the wheels of the cannons, they could not be carried along the cobbled road, the first mentions of abuse appear, see below in Spanish, grabbed, the indigenous thing about hair is not a continuous reference in the codices about abuse. Of the Spaniards of the encomenderos they have another one that is carried by a tameme at the top.

Interesting, the canvas of Tlaxcala is one of the most interesting indigenous documents because on the canvas of Tlaxcala we are always shown the Tlaxcalans leading the conquest. Well So let's conclude a little to give rise to questions. I think that after this panoramic vision that we have seen, we can be clear that first the conquest as a military fact was a fact that occurred with a large number of variants, it did not end with the conquest of mexico-tenochtitlan still 30 years after the conquest of mexico we have quotes the conquest of yucatan is just beginning just beginning in the 30s 240 nuño de guzmán is going to new galicia and the conquest of the chichimecas is beginning there is a great rebellion in 1542 chichimeca the piston war that ends up destroying even when the jara goes to work it has to move further down towards the jungle chapala nothing better it is now much further north this conquest continued even further north creating new vizcaya new lion new Mexico, these conquistadors who are carrying out the conquests of the north are businessmen as well as courteous.

No, if we see ourselves as conquerors, we lose this other dimension, which is the dimension of the man who becomes fortune and who does not find him scratching and stealing the gold of Montezuma. He finds him discovering silver mines, he finds her carrying shrimps, carrying missionaries, carrying cattle, carrying, well, everything that colonization implies is what Francisco de Ibarra did in Nueva Vizcaya or Luisa Carvajal in Monte Nuevo, Nuevo León, or Juan de Oñate in New Mexico. They are not conquerors but at the same time they are businessmen, they are investing in a company and the company is going to bring them many benefits and the king, to obtain money from that company, appoints them governors of these territories, the new kingdoms that are being created in the north that There are no longer nine Spains, they are called Nueva Galicia, Nueva Vizcaya, Nuevo León, New Mexico, and this one will be called Nueva Extremadura and Nuevo Santander.

If these northern territories are having another type of conquest and another very different type of colonization, if the conquest and colonization of this type could not be realized if the process of conversion or imposition of the Catholic faith did not go parallel to them and this is the other conquest that we cannot forget a saying I really like because it says England left railways in India Spain left churches in America that This is what the conquest is, the conquest is an obviously military economic conquest, the exploitation of metals, the metals were not extracted on their own, indigenous people, African mulatto mestizos were exploited and those metals are to enrich Europe and thanks to these in the takeoff and it was not Spain benefited from this takeoff but England and Holland, sometimes powers that were already much more advanced from an economic point of view than Spain, if these American metals totally transformed the idea of ​​the world as it was known and turned this world into something new, the conquest It brought with it this brought with it an increasingly accelerated process of globalization.

Don't remember, an important part of the conquest also had to do with the expansion of commercial networks. If the trade that we had seen was one of the factors that drove the discovery of America, it also It was one of the factors that led to expeditions from 9 Spain to the Philippines, to China, to Japan. Southeast Asia then came into contact with America and 9 Spain became the center of this globalized international trade, if nothing else, think about it. For example, in the 17th century the Ming dynasty began to collect its taxes in silver and the silver came from American mines, especially from Spain, that is, the Chinese paid their taxes with Mexican silver pesos.

If in the 17th century, then we are faced with a global process in which the New Spanish people of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries are going to be inserted or will be inserted and the conquest was only the first step of this complex process that continues to this day.