Luis Fernando Granados
Profesor del Doctorado en Historia y Estudios Regionales y de la Maestría en Ciencas Sociales del Instituto de Investigaciones Histórico-Sociales, Universidad Veracruzana
Fighting (over) Tenochtitlan: Fact, myth, and meaning of a proverbial battle
Abstract:
It’s not easy to read Cortés. He’s indeed Mesoamerica’s Caesar—Keegan’s Caesar, though. That is, he’s not a historian, not even a chronicler. He’s rather a self-aggrandizing politician. Thus he tells an implausible story about the battle for Tenochtitlan-Tlatelolco in 1521—a fantasy, really. It’s not just that his “allies” were in fact the campaign’s driving force; it’s that the city’s destruction was a rhetorical requirement. A new Spain required a clean slate, just as Carthage needed to be razed for Rome to emerge. That’s what he offered; that’s what until recently has been accepted as history. Reading Cortés against the grain could help us to think about the “Conquest” differently—about the “Conquest” of Tenochtitlan-Tlatelolco but also about the “Conquest” of New Spain-Mexico as a whole.
Luis Fernando Granados teaches history at the Universidad Veracruzana in Xalapa, Mexico. He received his PhD from Georgetown University in 2008, with a dissertation on “Cosmopolitan Indians and Mesoamerican Barrios in Bourbon Mexico City: Tribute, Community, Family, and Work in 1800.” He is the author of two books: Sueñan las piedras: Alzamiento ocurrido en la ciudad de México, 14, 15 y 16 de septiembre, 1847 (Ediciones Era), published in 2003, and En el espejo haitiano: Los indios del Bajío y el colapso del orden colonial en América Latina (Ediciones Era), published in 2016.