"Dad crossed the sea, violated Mom, and that's how Mexico was born." With these almost literal words, the Mexican historian Juan Miguel Zunzunegui summarizes how his compatriots understand today the foundation of their culture in 1517. To debunk this, Zunzunegui has written The day after the conquest (La Esfera de los Libros) and will give a master lecture tomorrow at the Rafael del Pino Foundation in Madrid.
How are things in Mexico with books like that? Can you debate with your colleagues, do they interview you well, do you have readers?
Academics hate me. I don't like the Academy, but I don't mess with them, I just say that I don't find them liberal but conservative. They hate me and do attack me. It's funny, they call me conservative, but it's the government lackeys who say it. That's my definition of conservative. The government doesn't like me either, of course. However, I am one of the best-selling authors in Mexico. In interviews, they ask me who pays for my books, who from the far right pays me. No, look, my readers pay me, and I have the freedom to think whatever I want.
Did this bias of seeing Hispanism as conservative exist before?
My education as a child already said that: wonderful glory for the pre-Hispanic peoples, infamy for the Spaniards who brought corruption, disease, and misfortune. In practice, in the 90s, no one took that seriously. Who had a grudge against the Spaniards? No one. It is true that the revolutionary left already followed indigenous discourses. But there is something important: their goal was never to dignify the Indians but to fragment and create enmity within society. That is the left's policy, we are all enemies of each other. "Don't focus on what makes us brothers, focus on the differences." In 2018, the current government took power, and now the average Mexican is angry with Spain and Hernán Cortés. Is it because they know things they didn't know before? No. It's because every day, at seven in the morning, López Obrador before and Sheinbaum now, give conferences of up to three hours, lying and telling the people who to hate. The government tells Mexicans that they should hate Spain, they say it day after day. In another time, that was a hate crime. But they are the ones labeling their enemies as fascists.
Did the Zapatista Army talk about Hispanism?
Oh, the Zapatista Army. A hooded figure would come out, we romanticized it, it was like Robin Hood... Marcos was a gem as a symbol.
He spoke very well, didn't he?
He spoke very well, he was brilliant. But one day they told us who he was: Rafael Sebastián Guillén Vicente, an intellectual, middle-class, urban, and white. And that summarizes many things about indigenism in Mexico. It's like Greta Thunberg looking for photos on a ship that will never reach Gaza. She doesn't care about the Palestinians, she doesn't care about indigenous peoples.
Are they going to save their own souls?
That soul thing was before, now they want likes. In 1992, during the celebration of the Fifth Centenary, when they still talked about the Discovery but started to mention genocide... Who danced and celebrated? The people from Oaxaca. Who talked about genocide? Just some clueless people who didn't know a word of Nahuatl or Maya. The angry ones who threw stones at Columbus were middle-class white university students. Useful idiots.
You describe the history of Mesoamerica as a succession of brief periods of dominance without continuity like that of Rome.
Because it was not a sustainable world. It was not a paradise of happiness as they tell us. What makes humans violent? Fear. And what is the worst fear? Subsistence. In Mesoamerica, there were no metals or plows. They had wheels but didn't use them in agriculture because there were no cultivable plains. They planted with coas, large sharpened wooden sticks that were thrust into the ground. Could a civilization be sustained like that? No. That's why the violence. Rome was invaded and plundered, it fell a thousand times and rose a thousand and one, it was never abandoned. Why? Because it was sustainable. In Mesoamerica, in 1504, they lived in a technology of stone and wood and in the belief system of shamans who performed human sacrifices. They were not dumber or worse people than the Europeans, but they were isolated from the world, few in number, had no access to innovation, and were afraid. The Spaniards arrived and advanced 5,000 years in a day with the plow and the oxen yoke.
Who were the Mexicas? Why the brutality?
Because they were a deeply resentful people who hated their neighbors. The real history, not the fairy tales they tell us, is that they were the last of the Nahua peoples who traveled from Nevada and California to Mesoamerica. They were called Aztecs, but their supposed brothers called them "the people without a face," which was a way of saying "you are nobody." They wanted to expel them, and they took refuge in the Chapultepec forest as a mercenary army for the lord of Azcapotzalco. When they emancipated themselves, their policy was revenge, and the theology that justified them was that of human sacrifices and cannibalism. In Mexico, they tell you that it was all a misunderstanding, that it was an honor to be sacrificed... Lie. The Aztecs never sacrificed Aztecs.
But Moctezuma was a reflective person who dialogued with Cortés and, from what I understand, knew that this brutality wouldn't work for long.
Moctezuma was fascinating. I love him, I find him fascinating. He was all that, and that's why his people killed him. The allies of the Mexicas were the Texcocans. Their kings are very popular in Mexico today, representing educated rulers. And they told the Mexicas: this has to change, this doesn't work. Moctezuma was a military man, he was also introspective and a mystic. He knew that his cosmogony was a falsification and that his world was not sustainable. He conversed with Hernán Cortés for 200 and some days and asked him the most intelligent question possible. How many are you, how many are coming behind you? Moctezuma had reports about the Spaniards since 1502, he knew they were arriving, that they were increasing. Many Mexicas told him: "Kill them, they are 400, you can." But Moctezuma understood that something more complex was happening.
I would like to ask you about Queen Isabel. Did Isabel speak of America as a humanist because she was a woman ahead of her time or did she represent something more complex?
Both things are true. In Spain, they forget who they are. The University of Salamanca was the greatest humanizing beacon in Europe, and Isabel was not just Isabel, Isabel was part of something, she was part of that. Fray Bernardino de Sahagún was not just Fray Bernardino, but he was also Salamanca. Isabel was such a complex, mysterious character. She was a mystic who felt sent by God. I suppose that if you don't feel sent by God, you don't embark on projects like America. But Isabel was also responsible for her actions. Other Spaniards wanted to enslave the Indians, but not her.
And Hernán Cortés? From your portrayal of Cortés, I understand that at the very least, his curiosity about the world was genuine.
He had a genuine interest that can only be explained because he also passed through Salamanca, where someone taught him that we are all people and that is sacred. Cortés found in America peoples he didn't understand, who scared him, and whom he might have despised... But he saw them as neighbors. I thought that was explained by Catholicism. But the Portuguese and the French were also Catholics and devastated and enslaved. Spain behaved as it did because it was Spain, because it was different from the rest of Europe. Spain brought art and language to America, founded cities, universities, hospitals, signed agreements, made grammars... Cortés, from the moment he set foot, spoke of peace and formed alliances with all the peoples he encountered. Moctezuma chose to persuade Cortés. He wanted to know who that man requesting entry was, who came without an army, who brought a translator and wanted to be understood... And Cortés said to him: "We will keep coming, even if you kill us." Moctezuma died depressed, but he understood something.
Why did Spain stop being attractive as a project for Mexicans in the 1800s?
The Empire worked very well for a long time with the system of the Habsburg viceroys, where no one was a colony of anyone. There was equality of conditions. The same justice, the same taxation... There was a dreamy vision of the new world based on faith. The Bourbons were different, they brought a centralist vision, took wealth to Madrid. In the 18th century, discontent began. Spain stopped providing good service and started demanding more. The royal fifth became a third. America became a colony, and the criollos began to talk about conquest and independence. It was the criollos, mind you, not the Indians.