Tension and distrust make the air feel heavy as the Spaniard conquistadors set foot onto Latin America. both the indigenous peoples of Latin America and the Spaniards unsure of the intentions of one another. The indigenous peoples fear the Spaniards, for the conquistadors threaten to destroy their entire world with their forceful assimilation to Christianity and Westernization; meanwhile, the Spaniards fear the indigenous peoples for their unfamiliar cultural practices and highly intelligent inventions and infrastructures that ultimately intimidate the narcissistic Spaniards. Throughout The Conquest of New Spain, Bernal Diaz, one of the Spanish conquistadors on the expedition to Latin America; portrays the “heroic” actions of the Spaniards as they travel from city to city, protecting the indigenous peoples from harm’s way and offering peace treaties to maintain harmony between the two clashing groups. He explores the complicated concept of justice from the perspective of the Spaniards as he brings to life the multiple expeditions that the conquistadors, including himself, partook in. While Diaz illustrates justice as saving the indigenous people of Latin America from their cruel and barbaric sacrifices and “evil” idols that they prayed to through Westernization and colonization, he fails to understand the decades of generational damage that the Spaniards inflicted upon the indigenous peoples by purposely neglecting to include the indigenous peoples’ perspectives in their struggle to fight to keep their culture and entire world as they know it alive to justify the conquistador’s cruel and murderous actions to gain power.

 

          In Diaz’ depiction of The Conquest of New Spain, he writes from the perspective of the Spanish conquistadors, defining the concept of justice in Latin America as saving the indigenous peoples from themselves and their barbaric religious practices through forced assimilation to create a peaceful and functioning civilization. To illustrate, he writes extensively of the repercussions and cruelty of the sacrifices that the indigenous peoples partook in as an essential part of their religion and how the Spaniards felt compelled to spread Westernization and Christianity to “save” the peoples of Latin America. He describes that during their stay in one of the cities, “That day they had sacrificed two boys, cutting open their chests and offering their blood and hearts to that accursed idol...we were all too upset by the sight of those two dead boys, and too indignant at their cruelty,” (Diaz, 1963; 38). Diaz’s inclusion of this sacrifice, without any further explanation of how sacrifice plays into the indigenous peoples’ culture, encapsulates the justification that the Spaniards used in the Westernization and eventual colonization of Latin America as he builds a savage imagery of the indigenous culture throughout his accounts through the plethora of both fear and disgust that arises from the brutality of their “evil” religion. 

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          Furthermore, in the documentary The Conquest of Mexico, the program portrays constant the dehumanization of the New World peoples by the conquistadors, as the Spaniards considered them as “monkey-like beings” and genuinely “debated whether or not the bipeds of the Latin America were actually human,”. One of the world’s largest film equipment and production companies in the 1900’s, Pathé Cinema, depicts the dehumanization and colonization of the Aztecs by the Spaniards in the documentary film The Conquest of Mexico (1991) by bringing history back to life through reenactment. In the film, they illustrated that not only did the conquistadors use degrading terms against the indigenous peoples to justify the colonization and the eventual murder millions of innocent people, but they also participated in games where the Spaniards hunted the indigenous peoples for sport. The players of said game actually had a name 一 mataindios 一 indicating the normalization of hunting and murdering indigenous people on a regular basis by the Spaniards for fun out of spite and white supremacy (Pathé Media, 1991). This also paints a portrait of the imaginary world that Diaz created that depicted the Spaniards as the saviors and heroes of Latin America and the indigenous peoples as mindless and uncivilized heathens who ruthlessly killed one another 一 despite the fact that Spaniards made a game out of hunting the New World Peoples. 

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          In fact, in historian Philip Russell’s historical accounts of the impact of colonization in Mexico, The History of Mexico: From Pre-Conquest to Conquest, he recollects that, “Some modern estimates put the population loss at more than 95 percent of the pre-Conquest population of central Mexico. This loss was greatest in the low-lying tropical areas along the Pacific and Gulf Coasts, where hundreds of villages ceased to exist,” (Russel, 2010; 32). This immense population loss demonstrates the hypocrisy of the Spaniards for criticizing and ridiculing the New World peoples for their rituals and unfamiliar cultural practices and yet mercilessly killing 95% of the indigenous population for their own benefit without any sense of remorse. The recurring theme of hypocrisy further emphasizes the white man burden that Europeans have taken upon themselves to force Westernization upon other civilizations that have different ideas and belief systems than them; foreshadowing the future forceful assimilation of other territories for no reason other than white supremacy and gaining more power. Diaz’ failure to include the perspective of the indigenous peoples throughout the colonization of Latin America by the hands of the Spaniards benefits his agenda of characterizing the conquistadors as white saviors of the “savage people” who refused to stop the practice of sacrifice to their idols to justify the destruction of ancient civilizations and cultural practices and the murder of millions of people.

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          Diaz’s recollection of his expeditions to Central and South Americas only emphasizes the continuous lack of justice of indigenous peoples through its continuous failure to reflect the selfish greed of the conquistadors for economic and political power that eventually killed entire civilizations of innocent people. To illustrate, when exploring the island Cozumel, “Cortes...told them as best as he could...that if they wished to be our brothers they must throw away their idols out of this temple, for they were very evil and led them astray...Then Cortes ordered us to break up the idols and roll them down the steps,” (Diaz, 1963; 62). Cortes’ cruel actions only foreshadows the Westernization of entire civilizations based on the false idea of white superiority that allows western cultures to validate their vicious efforts to erase generations of history and culture. This theme of Westernization and white superiority manifests throughout the entire of Diaz’ book; it further highlights the one-sidedness of the conquistadores versions of events that painted them as heroic figures that assisted these “barbaric” civilizations, leaving out the perspective of the indigenous peoples, who ultimately suffered at the hands of the conquistadors for no reason other than power and white superiority. 

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          By leaving out the perspectives of the indigenous peoples, Diaz completely ignores the genuine fear that the New World peoples had of the Spaniards and the threat that they posed to the well-being of the Earth. In author and researcher Micah Lee Issit’s Hidden Religion: The Greatest Mysteries and Symbols of the World’s Religious Beliefs, he highlights that the indigenous peoples of Latin America believed that, “Providing blood sacrifice was not simply considered a way to honor the gods or to win favor...It was generally believed that the world would cease to function, that the sun would no longer shine, and the rivers would no longer flow if the gods were not kept nourished with energy reciprocated through humanity,” (Issit, 2014; 371). The Aztecs and other warrior tribes did not simply attack the Spaniards because they valued violence and wanted to fight the conquistadors for sport, unlike Diaz’s recollection of the war; but instead because they believed that the Westernization of the Spaniards would ultimately lead to the destruction to the entire world as they know it. 

 

          This fear can also be seen by Montezuma, the King of the Aztec civilization, who denies the Cross and images of Our Lady that the Spaniards pushed onto the indigenous peoples, stating to Hernan Cortes, “‘My lord Malinche, these arguments of yours have been familiar to me for some time. I understand what you said to my ambassadors on the sandhills about the three gods and the cross, also what you preached in the various towns through which you passed. We have given you no answer, since we have worshipped our own gods here from the beginning and know them to be good. No doubt yours are good also, but do not trouble to tell us any more about them at present,’” (Diaz, 1963; 222-223). Montezuma's conversation with Cortes demonstrates that the indigenous peoples wanted to keep their culture alive at any cost; they would fight to protect their culture with their lives 一 and they did. Diaz’ purposeful neglection of the perspective of the indigenous peoples during the conquest of New Spain throughout his stories only amplifies the prejudice and racism against the people of Latin America as he reiterates harmful stereotypes of the indigenous culture and creates an imaginary world that paints the Spaniards as great heroes of the people. 

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          Bernal Diaz’s The Conquest of New Spain produced decades of generational trauma that exists to this day, for it normalizes historians to purposely erase historical accounts and perspectives of minority groups that teach white supremacy and learned prejudices against minorities, including people of color, the LGBTQ+ community, and women; to future generations. This endless cycle further traumatizes Latinx and other minority groups as they continuously suffer at the hands of half-written stories that create prejudice and racism.

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Reference List 

• Díaz Del Castillo, Cohen, and Cohen, J. M. The Conquest of New Spain. Penguin Classics; L123. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1963. 

• Films for the Humanities & Sciences, Infobase, Pathé Cinéma, and Films Media Group. The Conquest of Mexico. New York, N.Y.: Infobase, 2006. 

• Issitt, Micah L., Carlyn. Main, Ebrary, and Ebrary, Inc. Hidden Religion: The Greatest Mysteries and Symbols of the World's Religious Beliefs. Ebrary DDA Purchase. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, 2014. 

• Russell, Philip L. The History of Mexico: From Pre-conquest to Present. New York: Routledge, 2010.