"When minds create through the prism of the Black Legend narrative, they can discover everything they need." This is how Alfonso Borrego III, historian and maternal great-grandson of the Apache leader and warrior Gerónimo, summarizes his feelings upon watching the trailer for Aztec Batman: Clash of Empires. It is the new animated film of the Caped Crusader where the action takes place at the gates of Tenochtitlán, where the young Mexica noble Yohualli Coatl decides to don the mantle of the bat god Tzinacan after witnessing his father being betrayed and killed by the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés, who ends up transformed into Two-Face, the schizophrenic villain who cannot make a decision without flipping a coin first, silver in the comics, gold in the movie.
"Demonizes the Spaniards," "infectious Hispanophobic garbage that embraces pro-British theses with Batman's stamp" or "will the Aztec Batman sacrifice people with cannibalistic rituals in this anti-Spain propaganda?" are some of the comments made on social media after watching the movie trailer, sparking a bitter debate about the Spanish Black Legend and historical memory in Anglo-Saxon entertainment productions.
"Unfortunately, history can be distorted, and uninformed minds can take it as facts," Borrego explains to Crónica, who serves as the Director of Tourism and Cultural Affairs for the city of San Elizario (Texas) and is a member of the National Association of Chroniclers of Mexican Cities. "In the end, we have comic book characters indoctrinating young minds guided by indoctrinated minds. The Hollywood cycle continues," the historian asserts.
"A wise man once told me: fear either kills you or leads you to action," proclaims Coatl - the equivalent of Bruce Wayne - at the beginning of the trailer, presented at the recent San Diego Comic-Con. Mexican actor Horacio García Rojas lends his voice to him, for whom "seeing the audience's reaction, especially the Latino and Mexican audience," has been one of the "most beautiful" experiences of his career. "Long live Mexico, long live our roots, our culture, and our heritage!" he expressed at the end of the presentation. "People will learn about the Aztec Empire, they will know how the Spaniards invaded, what they sought, and what the outcomes were," added veteran actor Raymond Cruz, known for his roles in Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, and The Closer, and responsible for voicing the Joker in the English dub. In the first teaser of the movie, the Clown Prince of Crime is introduced as Yoka, a possessed priest who approaches Cortés and hints that the film will address the alliances forged between the conquerors and the oppressed peoples by Moctezuma, such as the Tlaxcaltecas or the Totonacs.
The film premieres on September 18 in Mexican theaters. In the rest of the world, it will be released on the HBO Max platform, although it lacks a release date in Spain despite featuring Spanish actor Álvaro Morte, star of Money Heist, portraying Captain Hernán Cortés. The Galician actor Juan Carlos Illanes also participates as Pedro de Alvarado in the film.
"The Eurocentric vision of what Latin America was is told from a single point of view, but when Cortés crowned the mountain to see Tenochtitlán, he realized it was larger than any city he had seen in Europe. Therefore, being able to generate a sense of pride and belonging to a culture has great value," justifies producer Aaron Berger. The film is a collaboration between Warner Bros Animation, DC Studios, and Ánima, a production company based in Mexico City that played a crucial role in the script development, signed by Ernie Altbacker - a veteran in superhero animation cinema -, Alfredo Mendoza, and Juan José Meza-León, also the film's director.
"The first to say, 'Well, General Cortés is the bad guy, right?' was José Carlos," Berger points out in reference to José Carlos García de Letona, co-founder and vice president of Ánima. "That's why he has two faces, because he promises cultural exchange, but in reality, it's conquest," he emphasizes.
"Fortunately, we have the support of Alejandro Díaz Barriga Cuevas, who is one of the prominent experts on Aztec culture and the Conquest of Mexico, which is why we are more than proud of what we have done. Because in a fantastic context, where, I will not tire of saying it, many liberties were taken, we also tried to make it very truthful and get as close as possible to the reality of the Aztec world with its customs, clothing, way of thinking, way of existing... We believe that this gives the film an even deeper and more interesting dimension than what we are proposing," García de Letona declares in the newspaper Excelsior.
But his words have not calmed Spanish fans who, in a short period of time, have seen how the conquerors are also not portrayed favorably in three recent productions from the competition, the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This happens in the animated series What If...? and in the movies Eternals and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. In the latter, the historical character Namor goes from being the King of Atlantis in the comics to the governor, on the big screen, of the underwater kingdom of Talokan, which emerges when a Maya tribe from Yucatán must venture underwater to survive the smallpox introduced by the Spanish colonizers. The way Namor gets his name in Ryan Coogler's movie is still a subject of mockery in Spain: a frightened priest calls him that because he is a violent "loveless child".
"There is always someone against it"
"There is always someone against something, against representing characters in one way or another, as if these characters belonged to them. If a specific story approach, no matter what it is, does not appeal to someone, that person can perfectly choose not to watch or read it, but nothing should ever be censored in terms of art and creativity. And especially with a character like Batman, who has been able to be many things for over eight decades," explains David Hernando, editorial director of Planeta Cómic/Minotauro and one of the main Batman scholars in the Hispanic world after dedicating much of his career to exploring the narrative and cultural evolution of the Dark Knight in works like Nocturnal Serenade or Batman: The Rest is Silence, recently reissued by Dolmen.
"These different versions of Batman in the comics started what is now known as Elseworlds. And in their adaptations to animation, they have managed to expand the character's myth and reach more people. They manage to distill Batman and his universe to the most basic, and since it is such an important and powerful story, it can adapt to any context. Whether contemporary to each era the character has lived since his debut in 1939 or even to periods before his origin," adds the former editor of DC Comics in Spain between 2005 and 2011, who considers the transformation of Hernán Cortés into the villain Two-Face as "very intelligent, very daring".
"It brings a nuance to the historical character that many of the people who see this adaptation were surely unfamiliar with. Once again, the fact that a character like Batman and his world are being adapted to Spanish narrative, as they were to English narrative in Gaslight [where Batman faced Jack the Ripper in the Victorian era], is something to highlight and celebrate," he opines.
"Batman is a story of redemption, where evil and its trauma become the motivation to save others from it. Bruce Wayne doesn't want anyone else to suffer as he did, and he patrols his city tirelessly. He is justice born from chaos," reflects Pedro Angosto, screenwriter, historian, and critic of Literature, Hermeticism, Mythology, and Popular Culture, as well as author of the essays Superheroes: A History of American Comics and Sandman vs. Lucifer: Hope in Hell (Vola Archives).
However, Angosto believes that, despite the existence of "an Aztec bat god called Tzinacan or Camazotz," the authors of Batman Azteca should have "taken a risk" and "looked for a moment in Aztec history without the presence of the always controversial conquistadors, because the history of Spain is no worse than that of other countries." "Like the villain in Pocahontas, the Spanish conquistadors wanted to take over the world, but there's much we don't know. And now progress seems to consist of dismantling civilization," laments Angosto, screenwriter of Knights of Justice. Borrego, the historian descended from Geronimo, also criticizes this misunderstood simplification. "The worst thing about the Black Legend is that the Spanish believed it," he concludes.