Apologies for the conquest? “Spain has the same responsibility for what happened 500 years ago as it does for the Cro-Magnon species”

It happened in the 1930s when the communist painter Diego Rivera captured in his murals for the National Palace of Mexico an image of Hernan Cortes which showed the conqueror as a deformed and bloodthirsty being, driven exclusively by greed. The image of the conquest of America by the Spanish Crown, tremendously complex, then began to be trivialized as an object of propaganda. Leaving Cuba in 1519 with 500 soldiers, 16 horses and 13 shotguns, Cortés managed to become master of the immense territory of the Aztecs in just two years. But could he really do it alone?

The latest diplomatic incident between Spain and Mexico has once again awakened interest in knowing the most current assessment of historiography on the conquest of America. It all started in March 2019, when the president Andrés López Obrador demanded by letter to king Philip VI to ask forgiveness for the events that occurred five centuries ago. Since she did not receive any response, a few days ago the president-elect Claudia Sheinbaun decided not to invite the head of the Spanish State to his next inauguration. After a tense telephone conversation between Sánchez and López Obrador, our country will finally not send any delegation to the event.

How do current historians interpret Spain’s role in the conquest? Esteban Mira Caballosa specialist in the relations between Spain and America in the 16th century and author of two biographies on Francisco Pizarro (Crítica, 2018), and Hernán Cortés (Crítica, 2021) respond that Sheinbaum’s populist discourse is totally outside the historiographic evolution , both what is done in Spain and in Mexico itself.

“In Spain the conquest is seen as a fundamentally agreed history that was only possible with the collaboration of hundreds of indigenous groups throughout the American continent. Increasingly, the active participation of thousands of indigenous people is highlighted not only in the conquering process but also in the configuration of viceregal America. Without indigenous people there would have been no conquest, in the case of Mexico without the collaboration of the Tlaxcaltecas, Acolhuas, Cholultecas, Chalcas, Totonacas… They were also essential in the administration and defense of the viceroyalty for three centuries.”

“Mexican historiography,” continues Mira Caballos, “which is headed by authors such as Guy Rozat o Pedro Salmeron come to the Spanish sources, and particularly the Relationship Letters by Hernán Cortés, as a great farce about a story that never existed. For them, Hernán Cortés and his men were adventurers who passed by and entered the confrontation between the Mexica Triple Alliance and the Tlaxcalteca Triple Alliance. Evidently, the result of the conquest with the establishment of Viceregal America dismantles this possibility. But in any case, both visions leave out any question of asking for forgiveness for a historical process that in any case was shared and where the Spanish represented a minority.”

But, then, if Mexico’s demands for forgiveness do not respond to a legitimate historical review, can we say that they are part of a tortuous political use of the past? For Felipe Fernández-Armesto (London, 1950) there is no doubt about it. The internationally renowned historian, professor at the University of Notre-Dame (Indiana, USA) and author of a dozen books on the conquest, remembers that The historian’s task is understanding, not condemnation, of the inhabitants of other times and cultures.

“There is no such thing as ‘historical memory’. There are only two types of memory: true and false. Of course, the indignation of Ibero-American politicians is feigned. From the moment of achieving independence, their predecessors had the ironic courage to blame their misfortunes and failures on the ‘Spanish heritage’. The truth is that in the 18th century the colonies experienced a golden century, when they surpassed the English, for example, in prosperity, culture, education, science and arts. The disasters of the 19th and 20th centuries were the fault of contemporaries in America itself, not of already dead Spaniards. The tears of the XXI are the fault of the current leaders. But those who fail in their internal policies always try to distract their voters with complaints directed abroad.”

Fernández-Armesto relates how the most recent investigations of the period have brought to light thousands of revealing archival documents in indigenous languages: “They reveal a world that most of my colleagues have not even suspected existed: an empire of collaboration between indigenous elites, creoles , and peninsular, where the native peoples as a general rule hated each other more than the Spanish. Not even the word ‘conquest’ corresponds to the reality of an empire that was expanding for the most part peacefully, a fact obscured by the appetite that historians and their readers have always demonstrated for the relatively few episodes of violence, carnage and cruelty.”

In a context of growing debates about colonization and its consequences, what responsibility, if any, would the Spanish State have in recognizing or apologizing for events that occurred more than 500 years ago? “Exactly the same as that of the Cro-Magnon species, that is, all current humans, with the Neanderthals,” answers Antonio López Henares. ‘Chani’ Henares has written great historical novels about the conquest such as Cow’s Head (Editions B, 2020) or Hispaniola (Harper Collins, 2023) and is the current president of the Writers with History association, which brings together more than 50 authors of the genre.

“The responsibility that the Spanish State would have in apologizing for events that occurred more than 500 years ago is exactly the same as that of the Cro-Magnon species, that is, all current humans, with the Neanderthals”

Antonio Lopez Henares

“All this is an attempt to hide what the rulers have done in that and other countries,” he says, “because when at the beginning of the 19th century Spain had to leave that territory, in the words of Humboldt, it was the most prosperous region and emerging of the Earth, with its large cities, especially in current Mexico, its communications, its commerce, its industries and its cultural capacity with more than twenty universities. What happened in these last 200 years? that they should respond instead of continuing with the noise of blaming their grandparents, since in any case their grandparents would be responsible, and not ours, who stayed here.

Pérez Henares concludes: “Above the interpretations there is an clarifying element, although it is attempted to be ignored. The percentage of mestizo or indigenous population in the territories that once belonged to the Hispanic Empire reaches 80-90 percent of the population. What is the case of the English empire and specifically the US? 1.1 percent. This completely demonstrates where a genocide took place and where it did not.. Otherwise, The terrible Mexican empire, not Aztec, was a bloodthirsty theocracy of terrible ferocity, where human sacrifices and anthropophagous rites abounded. In Cortés’s final assault on Tenochtitlan, the Spanish numbered less than 2 percent of his troops. The bulk was made up of the subjugated ethnic groups and tribes led by the Tlaxcalans. These should not be Mexicans, as, apparently, López Obrador, grandson of a sergeant of the Santander Civil Guard, is and much more than anyone else. Such is its root.”

---