The Spanish invasion is an open wound, says writer Enrique Ortiz

More than 500 years later, the Conquest of Mexico is still an open wound, according to the writer Enrique Ortiz, who attributes this situation to the political elites, mainly from the post-revolutionary regimes, who have ideologized history and presented it with a Manichaean vision. , good and bad.

Many politicians have ideologized history; They make politics through it or bias it through their ideologies. That is the cancer that we Mexicans carry with us and the hatred towards our indigenous, Hispanic and African roots. They worship the dead indigenous people, but they despise the living oneshe states.

Known on social networks by his nickname Tlatoani Cuauhtémoc and the dissemination work he does through national history, spanning from pre-Hispanic times until well into the 20th century, the author has just published the book The Conquest for people in a hurrywith the Planeta seal.

In this work he shares his vision of that complex historical episode, delves into the key events and its main characters, in addition to revealing hidden or little-known episodes and debunking some of the most deeply rooted myths.

It is an objective chronicle in which I do not lean towards either the indigenous or the Hispanic side, because there are more and more popularizers or writers who take sides, which I find deplorable.says Ortiz in an interview.

“And it seems so to me because history is not about parties or heroes and villains; There is no Manichaean history. Tenochtitlan and the Mesoamerican world were not the Eden that they wanted to paint for us where there was no syphilis, slavery or massacres of entire peoples.

But the conquerors were not charitable souls either. Hernán Cortés did not arrive with the idea of ​​being the father of mestizaje, that conception did not even exist. They came because they had nothing to lose in Spain; That is, they were in a situation of economic difficulties and decided to risk everything to gain glory for posterity, lands and Indians to exploit, and finally riches, silver and gold.

Despite being a very summarized historical account that is encompassed in 246 pages, the historian opted for a narrative full of colors and emotionsas well as for emphasizing details or passages that in his opinion have been left aside from that feat. To do this, he says, he drew on primary sources from the 16th century and books and writings made over time, as well as the most recent historical, archaeological and anthropological findings and research.

In this way, this chronicle reveals the participation of black or colored conquerors, such as Juan Garrido, who is known to have founded the Hermitage of the Martyrs for all his companions who died on the so-called Sad Night, in which Today it is Hidalgo Avenue, near the current church of San Hipólito y Casiano. Another of those characters, he comments, was the African slave Francisco de Eguía, who arrived with Pánfilo de Narváez and who is blamed for having been case zero of the smallpox that devastated these lands.

The popularizer also mentions recent findings by archaeologist Enrique Martínez Vargas, which document that in Sultepec Tocoaque, in the west of the current state of Tlaxcala, a large number of mulattoes and Africans who accompanied a column of Spaniards were, along with them, ambushed, prisoner, sacrificed and consumed by the natives of that place in June 1520.

“Suddenly, these data that I focus on and want to highlight are not present in other chronicles, as is the case with the participation of women in the Conquest. There is the case, for example, of María Estrada, who was nicknamed The Old Woman because he was between 30 and 40 years old when he joined Cortés’ army. She arrived to these lands accompanying her husband, a conquistador named Farfán; “an extremely brave and brave woman,” he points out.

According to Ortiz, Mexicans still we carry the open wound of the Conquest, inflicted, above all, by the political elites, who maintain a Manichean vision of history.

Our rulers, he emphasizes, To a large extent they repudiated Hispanicism because for them it was an issue of nations, arguing that Spain invaded Mexico, when neither country existed 500 years ago, or that the Tlaxcalans were traitors. Why would they be, if they were at war with the Mexica because they massacred them and wanted to subjugate them and why should Malinche or Doña Marina be faithful to the Mexica, when she was neither one of them nor did she pay homage to them? What she sought was a way to survive the cataclysm of the world in which she was born..