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 Entertainment | October 2007 
Cortes Conquers The Aztecs In 'The Other Conquest'
 Starpulse News Blog
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| | The Other Conquest hits DVD on October 16. |
On November 8, 1519 the Spanish Conqueror Hernando Cortés and his small army rode into the Aztec capital of the vast Mexican Empire, where they were welcomed by the Emperor Moctezuma. Within two years, the Aztec civilization was in a state of orphanage, the survivors having lost their families, homes, language, temples... and Gods.
A boldly imaginative and deeply affecting story of faith and courage, The Other Conquest is written and directed by Salvador Carrasco and produced by Alvaro Domingo. Legendary tenor Plácido Domingo is executive producer and is featured on the soundtrack singing an aria composed especially for the movie. Heading the picture's international cast are Damián Delgado (Men with Guns), Elpidia Carrillo (Tortilla Heaven), José Carlos Rodríguez and Iñaki Aierra.
In brief, the Aztecas/Mexicas were the native American people who dominated central Mexico at the time of the Spanish Conquest in the early 16th century.
According to their own legends, the Aztecs originated from a place called Aztlan, located somewhere in north or northwestern Mexico, or perhaps even in what we now call the United States of America. They were originally a small, nomadic, Nahuatl-speaking aggregation of tribes living on the margins of civilized Mesoamerica. But by the 15th century, the Aztecs had created an empire surpassed in size in the Americas only by the Incas in Peru. The story of the Spanish Conquest of Mexico began in 1511 with Diego Velázquez's conquest of Cuba. In 1519, Velázquez sent his lieutenant, Hernando Cortés, to investigate the territory of Mexico. At the time, Mexico was ruled by the powerful Aztec Emperor, Moctezuma II. Because an ancient Aztec prophecy had foretold of the return of the white-skinned god, Quetzalcoatl, Moctezuma mistakenly received Cortés as a god. Greedy for the Aztec gold, Cortés capitalized on Moctezuma's confusion, took the Emperor captive and set about his conquering the Mexican Empire.
Like many colonial ventures, The Spanish Conquest proved devastating in all ways to the indigenous population. Prior to the Conquest, it is estimated that between 12 and 25 million Indians lived in Mexico. But following the first century after the Conquest, only 1.2 million Indians were left alive in Mexico . a fatality rate of more than 90 percent.
Much of the indigenous population was wiped out by diseases introduced by the Spaniards . including smallpox, measles, influenza, typhus and malaria. And even the host of new plants and animals brought by the Europeans proved deadly. The Indians had little or no resistance to what was essentially a "biological revolution." In central Mexico alone, some eight million people, perhaps one-third of the native population, perished within a decade of the Spaniards' arrival, the vast majority succumbing to disease.
Compounding the Indians' despair was their feeling that the Spaniards seemed impervious to these diseases, as the Europeans had long developed a relative immunity to these ills. This only reinforced the locals' belief that they had been abandoned by their own deities. The early missionaries capitalized on this sentiment, with several Spanish clergy writing about the epidemics as "divine retribution" for the pagan rituals of the past.
Among other factors, this partly resulted in the incredibly rapid and effective conversion of the native population. numbering a million converts by 1536. No other region in the region in the world succumbed to Christianity so quickly.
But, of course, there were many, like Topiltzin, who resisted being converted to Christianity and who strove to preserve their traditions and beliefs despite the overwhelming reality of a new, hostile world. The Church campaigned against these indigenous malcontents by destroying any and all links to their religious and cultural past.
Indian temples were desecrated and their deities banned; locals were forced to watch as their sacred icons were smashed and treasured codices burned (like the one painted by Topiltzin in The Other Conquest); and public conversions/floggings (like Topiltzin's) were frequent occurrences.
Ultimately, like Topiltzin's conversion, Mexico's brand of Christianity required an amalgamation of the Indian past and Spanish future. The pivotal moment in the genesis of a hybrid Indian/Spanish Christianity occurred on December 9, 1531. On that day and Indian named Juan Diego reportedly saw a brilliant vision of a young woman. Using Diego's native dialect, Nahuatl, she identified herself to him as none other than the Virgin Mary.
Juan Diego communicated the apparition to the Bishop of New Spain, but the Bishop was naturally skeptical and gave his story little credence. Three days later, on December 12th, during a second apparition, Juan Diego asked for a sign that would convince the Bishop of his story's authenticity. The young woman instructed him to fill his cloak with red roses, which were not only blooming unnaturally in December but native to Spain, and take them to the Bishop. When the seer unrolled his cloak before the Bishop, a permanent image of the dark-skinned, indigenous-looking Virgin Mary was imprinted on his garment. The Bishop accepted this as a genuine sign of the Virgin's presence, and the apparition subsequently became known as "Our Lady of Guadalupe."
Despite resistance from many white colonists and clergy, the Indians were permitted to build a sanctuary for Guadalupe in 1533. In 1709, a tremendous basilica was built displaying Juan Diego's cloak with the Virgin Mary's image on it. And in 1945, Pope Pius XII called "The Lady of Guadalupe" the "Queen of Mexico and the Empress of the Americas." More recently, Pope John Paul II first declared the Virgin of Guadalupe "patron saint of America" (meaning the entire continent), and then in July 2002 he made the strongest statement yet in the Catholic Church's embrace of Latin American Indians by delivering the long-awaited canonization of Juan Diego, the legendary messenger of the Virgin of Guadalupe.
Still, total reconciliation (or even assimilation) has yet to fully take place in Mexico between the indigenous population and their conquerors. For while the colonial era in Mexico began with optimism that the welfare of both Spaniards and Indians could be simultaneously accommodated, as early as the 16th century it was grossly apparent this goal was unobtainable. One governing Spanish official, Viceroy Luis de Velasco II, would go as far to say: "The two republics of Spaniards and Indians, which form this colony, are so repugnant to each other... it seems that the preservation of the former always means the oppression and destruction of the latter."
For Salvador Carrasco, the writer/director of The Other Conquest, the film poses the possibility of understanding between different cultures through tolerance, a notion which he finds reflected in this quote of Elie Wiesel's: "If I respect The Other for whatever The Other is, and The Other respects me for whatever I am, then there can be understanding between people." |
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