Apart from ephemerides, the study of the Conquest

Two books on the history of confrontation and miscegenation whose publication exceeded the emblematic commemorative date of 500 years, are the work of full-time researchers Luis Barjau and Guillermo Turner. And it is that the theme, endless, for which the UNAM collections “Mexico 500” and “1521. A bundle of lives”, cannot stop, according to its coordinator, the doctor in history Gibrán Bautista, because the historical investigation continues beyond “conjunctural moments”.

MEXICO CITY (Process).– The commemorations of the fifth centenary of the arrival of Hernán Cortés in Veracruz (1519), his meeting with Moctezuma Xocoyotzin (1520) and the fall of Tenochtitlán (1521) left historiography with a variety of books that expanded the themes, perspectives and knowledge about that period in the history of Mexico.

Two examples are Hernán Cortés and Moctezuma Xocoyotzin. Encounter and conquest, by Luis Barjau (1943), and The Silences of a Story. The Castilian past of Bernal Díaz “del Castillo” and the Cover-up of his Family Environment, by Guillermo Turner, both written in 2021 but recently co-published by the Ministry of Culture, the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) and El Tucán of Virginia.

In the first, of 146 pages, Barjau analyzes the cultural union, albeit violent, between the West and Mesoamerica, symbolically represented by the first meeting between the conqueror and the Mexica tlatoani, on November 8, 1519 “at a point on the Iztapalapa road ”.

According to the writer and anthropologist, the cultures of both sides of the world flourished almost at the same time: There are records of La Venta, Tabasco, or Tres Zapotes, Veracruz, dating back to 1200 BC, the same as the Greek culture, cradle of the West. And he assumes that sooner or later the encounter would take place that -although the European culture in an alleged superiority considers it as “salvation”- translated into the exploitation, marginalization, decadence and progressive extinction of the Mesoamerican cultures that resulted in the “mestizaje”. ”.

Small in format and easily transportable, the volume is divided into two parts; the first with the chapters: “History of the Conquest”, “Life of Cortés in the islands. biographical adventures. The portrait of Bernal Díaz del Castillo”, “Management of Cortés: rupture with Velázquez, sinking of the ships, liberality with his host”, “Cortés’s route in Mesoamerica”, “His version of the events (Letters of relationship)” which includes Letter from the council and Second letter, “Meaning of its historical figure” and “Epidemics in the indigenous population”. The next part contains the texts “Moctezuma and the Conquest” and “Palabras finales”.

Barjau’s story refers to the moments in which the Catholic Monarchs, Isabella of Castile fundamentally, bet on the voyage of Christopher Columbus “and 15 years later! the discovery of Mesoamerica continued”, until reaching the union of “two civilizational blocs” whose result is the birth of mercantilism in America: “a new stay of the individual and his peoples on the face of the Earth”.

The investigation dismantles some of the ideas repeated even by the official history of the Conquest, such as the superstition of Moctezuma Xocoyotzin and the cession of the throne to Cortés, described by the conqueror himself in the Second letter of relationship to Carlos V of 1520. Likewise, He adds that it would have been impossible for the speech that Cortés assures he gave for it, could have been translated by Malinche or Jerónimo de Aguilar, since they barely spoke an elementary Nahuatl, when -in the case of a tlatoani- Moctezuma had to express himself in a “high and very refined language”. ”.

The specialist, author among other books of Texcatlipoca (UNAM, 1991) and La conquista de la Malinche (Planeta, 2009), emphasizes that the empire of the Mexica was defeated by many subjugated peoples, allies of Cortés, who from the first encounter made prisoner to the tlatoani.

Bernal’s silences

The True History of the Conquest of New Spain, by Bernal Díaz del Castillo, is an essential reference for recounting the history of the Mexican nation, but what is known about the life of its author, where did he come from, why, how did he incorporated the hosts of Hernán Cortés and became alderman of Guatemala?

The historian Guillermo Turner answers these questions in the book Los Silencios de una Historia, which is subtitled “The Castilian past of Bernal Díaz ‘del Castillo’ and the concealment of his family environment”, which –without mentioning it– reinforces the arguments in against the idea of ​​the French historian Christian Duverger that it was not Bernal, but Cortés who wrote the true History…

In 2013, Duverger assured in his book Chronicle of Eternity that Bernal could not write that monumental work, due to his old age and considering it impossible for a common soldier to have such erudition and culture. The debate was revived amid the commemorations for the 500 years.

Although already in his books The soldiers of the Conquest: cultural inheritances (2013) and The library of the soldier Bernal Díaz del Castillo (2016) Turner, teacher in History by the UNAM and researcher of the INAH, showed an opposite position.

According to him, the position of the French historian is “speculative and fanciful”, as well as prejudiced for considering a soldier incapable of writing the renowned book for not having been to the university like Cortés. When in his opinion, moreover, the writing of History… has no comparison with the Relationship Letters that the conqueror sent to Spain. And he mentions Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra himself, a soldier who was in a war in which he was not a captain or anyone famous, and he wrote Don Quixote.

Turner takes the reader back to the family background of Díaz del Castillo (ca. 1496-1584) in the town of Medina del Campo, where he was born; His grandfather Sancho Bernal and his father Francisco Bernal were aldermen, he says about it in an interview with Proceso:

“We knew very little and I had to find out more, where he was born, what he had done before participating in the Conquest, what he did for a living, what he had studied; evidently, he knew how to read and write, and although we didn’t know much about his family, we imagined him living in a more or less comfortable way, since his father was alderman of Medina del Campo, so I took on the task of going to archives where they spoke of the aldermen of Medina del Campo.”

He describes in the book that this town was strategic at the time of the Catholic Monarchs Isabel and Fernando, because it is located at a crossroads. And he reconstructs the biography with information published by Bernal in both Historia Verdadera… and the Guatemala and Alegría manuscripts, where he records the name of his mother, María Díez Rejón.

He himself also narrates his trip to Cuba, and how there a group of soldiers invited him to proclaim Cortés captain against Diego Velázquez. Thus, it will be remembered, is how Cortés takes command and manages to reach Mesoamerican lands.

The historian tracks down a character named Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo, author of the chivalric novel Amadís de Gaula and former alderman also of Medina del Campo, since it was he who inspired Bernal to fight for the publication of his True History… in search for fame For this he hid some negative aspects of his story: his grandfather Sancho was accused of murdering a person and bribery, and his father was a spy for the king.

The signature of the author of the True Story… appears in many documents as Bernal Díaz and reaches posterity as Bernal Díaz del Castillo. And Turner tells in his book how and why.

open cycle

Through two sister collections, UNAM joined the enrichment of knowledge about the Conquest and the colonial period: “Mexico 500” and “1521. A bundle of lives”, edited by various dependencies: UNAM Culture, UNAM Books, Publications and Editorial Development, Historical Research Institutes (and its Oaxaca Unit), Aesthetics, Bibliographic and University Studies, among others.

Both are coordinated by the doctor in history Gibrán Bautista, academic secretary of the IIH and specialist researcher in the 16th and 17th centuries, who explains to Proceso that the purpose was to discover specific stories of the protagonists of that historical period, as well as the social circumstances and that triggered the process of global impact.

It is also about offering a wide audience, since it is not dedicated only to specialists, updates on the topics, based on recent research, with a very accessible language. In the case of the 1521 collection, he adds, the range of authors is such that one can find essays, literary works, etc.

“Our interest is that they can be read by specialists and accepted by the academic community for the quality of their results, but also, and fundamentally, that they can be read in the Metro, the neighborhood, the neighborhood, the house”

And it is that they had to plan some when the health emergency kept many students at home and it was a way of bringing history closer to them. Among the titles in the “Mexico 500” collection are La Conquista y el mar: una historia global, by Iván Valdés-Bubnov; The Invention of New Spain, by Francisco Quijano Velasco; 1521 in baroque art, by Elsa Arroyo Lemus; Books and printing in Mexico in the 16th century, by Marina Garone Gravier; and Malintzin, or the Conquest as a translation, by Federico Navarrete.

In the other series, among other titles, Fray Pedro de Gante was published. Spirituality and wisdom in times of mission, Juana Zúñiga or the first Castilian nobility of America, by María Vicens Hualde; Hernán Cortés, ambitious, adventurous, brave and womanizer, by Úrsula Camba Ludlow; Bernal Diaz del Castillo. Narrating the Conquest between volcanoes, by Víctor Castillo Aguilar; and three times three. In code Malintzin: Nine approaches to the figure of him, by Yásnaya Elena A. Gil.

Bautista emphasizes that despite the collections were born within the framework of the 5 Centenary commemoration and are now closed, for the IIH and the other dependencies, historical research is part of their work and continues, regardless of anniversaries and conjunctural moments .

In his case, for example, the history of the Conquest and the colonial period is his specialty and he continues his research because they are issues that concern everyone as a society.

Dr. Barjau also exposes it by pointing out that the Conquest is a complex and unique phenomenon in the history of the world and confronted two cultural traditions:

“The formidable anthropological differences, between both sides, sowed an enigma that has created an immense library that does not fully satisfy the concern of many scholars and observers of the phenomenon.”

Apart from ephemerides, the study of the Conquest