Zunzunegui: "There was no conquest, the Spanish were received.": The word conquest is a lie. Mexico didn't exist. You can't conquer what doesn't exist. Who brought down Cuzco or Tenochtitlán? The local indigenous people allied with a handful of Spaniards. To call that a conquest or invasion is absurd. In the very specific case of Mexico, the fall of Tenochtitlán was by an army of 100,000 warriors, accompanied by Cortés and 400 Spaniards. Imagine, this army saw that they had already taken Tenochtitlán and realized that united they could take on anyone, even the Mexica. And do you think that once united they didn't think, "Hey, if we stay united we can also drive out the Spaniards"? But they didn't. In Mexico and in Spain, we don't tell this part of the story. All these indigenous peoples who allied with Cortés against the Mexica welcomed the Spaniards. There was no conquest; they were welcomed, signed agreements, forged alliances, made mixed marriages, and thus mestizaje (racial and cultural mixing) was born. The Spanish were welcomed by everyone except the Mexica.
https://www.eldebate.com/historia/20241203/zunzunegui-no-hay-ninguna-conquista-espanoles-fueron-recibidos_243227.html
Juan Miguel Zunzunegui, Mexican academic, historian and writer
Zunzunegui: "There was no conquest, the Spanish were received."
"When you build a cathedral that takes 200 years to construct, that's not a colony, you're settling there to live," Zunzunegui explains.
The arrival of the Spanish in what would later be called America has been a subject of debate and misinterpretation, thanks in part to the Black Legend and a lack of knowledge of history itself. We spoke with Juan Miguel Zunzunegui , a Mexican historian, academic, and popularizer of history who has dedicated part of his research and outreach to critically examining the history of America and Mexico that we have been taught in schools and universities.
— What is taught about Hispanicity in Mexico and other countries in the Americas?
"It's not taught, that's the problem. We're one big family that doesn't know each other. What is taught in Mexico? Basically, this: The pre-Hispanic world was perfect, it was wonderful, it was glorious, there was no corruption, not even cavities. Everything was perfect here until the Spanish arrived. Then we focus on the conquest and see it as something terrible. Here begins the viceroyalty, and we skip 300 years of history, and we pick up again with Mexican independence. 'Hey, what about those 300 years? Well, we were slaves of the Spanish,' they tell us. So, if you don't study the 300 years in which we formed the Hispanic world, it doesn't matter if you travel around Mexico seeing everything I just described, you haven't even realized that it's Spanish. And the bad thing is that in Spain it's taught the same way; they don't teach them what they built in those 300 years either. It's a terrible educational void on both sides of the ocean."
—The word conquest is a lie. Mexico didn't exist. You can't conquer what doesn't exist. Who brought down Cuzco or Tenochtitlán? The local indigenous people allied with a handful of Spaniards. To call that a conquest or invasion is absurd. In the very specific case of Mexico, the fall of Tenochtitlán was by an army of 100,000 warriors, accompanied by Cortés and 400 Spaniards. Imagine, this army saw that they had already taken Tenochtitlán and realized that united they could take on anyone, even the Mexica. And do you think that once united they didn't think, "Hey, if we stay united we can also drive out the Spaniards"? But they didn't. In Mexico and in Spain, we don't tell this part of the story. All these indigenous peoples who allied with Cortés against the Mexica welcomed the Spaniards. There was no conquest; they were welcomed, signed agreements, forged alliances, made mixed marriages, and thus mestizaje (racial and cultural mixing) was born. The Spanish were welcomed by everyone except the Mexica.
In Spain, they don't teach them what they built during those 300 years either.
— Colony, genocide, slavery. These are three words often used to describe the conquest of America. Is there any truth to them? How would you explain the conquest to someone who comes with that narrative?
"Those are three lies. Colonization is what England, France, Belgium, and Holland do. I cross the sea, control coastlines, build ports, extract resources, and take them back to my metropolis. In Mexico, the Spanish arrived and went inland, founded cities, built cathedrals, built roads to the north, and settled there. They had children, and those children are our grandparents. That's not a conquest; it's a migratory process. By 1650, there were 50,000 Spaniards and 1 million Indigenous people. Where's the conquest? When you build a cathedral that takes 200 years to construct, that's not colonization; you're staying to live there. There's nothing like a colony; it's an integral part of the same kingdom."
—And the genocide?
— Regarding genocide, it must have several characteristics to be considered as such. Number one: it must be planned. Spain did not plan that. Number two: it must be carried out. Spain did not carry it out. Number three: "I want to wipe out this people because I hate this people." None of that happened. The "first generation of conquerors" baptized the women and married them. When I talk about miscegenation in Mexico, they tell me: "Yes, of course, because they raped them." No, they baptized them and married them. In the 17th century, baptism meant that I was integrating you into what I was, making you part of my religion, my worldview, my culture. From now on, since I have baptized you, you and I are equal, and now I can marry you and have children, and our child is legitimate and is another equal. That is not genocide.
Why is the indigenous population declining in the Americas? For three reasons: first, because of the lie we're told that there were 25 million inhabitants in Mexico when the Spanish arrived. That's not true. There were at most 8 million inhabitants. If the number is 25 million, you could say that 95% of the population died, but that's not true. Second, it wasn't the Spanish; it was smallpox. Third, because of miscegenation. So, why isn't there a large 100% indigenous population? Because we mixed. You don't create the grammar of a people you want to exterminate; you create the grammar of the language of a people you want to understand. You don't mix with the people you want to exterminate.
— What about slavery?
— The laws. Isabella the Catholic saying, “Let Spaniards marry Indian women, let them marry and let us be one people.” Also the Laws of Burgos of 1512, the bull Sublimis Deus of Paul III in 1537, the New Laws of 1542, the Valladolid Controversy, by Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, which prohibited the enslavement of Indians. If anything was clear throughout, it is that slavery is prohibited here. Why? Because we are all Christians, we are all people, and we are all part of the same crown. There can be no slaves here.
— Is this negative image partly due to the negative legend? Does it still exist?
— It's very important not to overuse the term "Black Legend." There is a Black Legend, of course. Bartolomé de las Casas lies from beginning to end, speaking of 24 million dead where there weren't even 24 million inhabitants. It's absurd. I don't know why Bartolomé de las Casas did that, but what is very clear is that in the midst of the Dutch War of Independence against Spain, the Eighty Years' War, William of Orange, the leader of the Dutch, took Bartolomé de las Casas's "A Brief History of the Indies," distorted it, exaggerated it, and added those terrible details. Furthermore, he had lithographs printed where you can see two Spaniards sawing an Indian in half, 20 Indians hanging like hams. And of course, you have to understand that engravings in the 17th and 18th centuries were the photographs or artificial intelligence of their time. A mind from that era sees such an engraving and says, "How horrifying!" and swears it saw reality. No, you saw a drawing that was made to make you think exactly that. What you shouldn't do nowadays is dismiss everything bad said about you as just a smear campaign, because abusing that tactic would completely undermine your credibility.
— What elements are needed to reconstruct or disseminate this new Hispanicity?
— More than rebuilding, I would say reinterpreting, because the structure is there, everything Spain did in America is there. Suddenly we are 500 million Spanish speakers, and 90% of the continent is Catholic, and those who aren't Catholic belong to other Christian denominations, and those who are atheists are atheists of the Catholic God, and they are all devotees of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The Virgin of Guadalupe came from Spain. What we have to do is reinterpret it, and for that we have to wage the cultural battle.
It's very important to look to the future. I gave a lecture entitled: Together We Were an Empire, and from the beginning I told them: "Notice the verb conjugation, Together We Were. That's over now." You can't fight against the force of history. The Spanish Empire fell and died forever. But we must understand that past to see all the positive things we have in common and build a future. We have a shared past because together we were an empire. The Hispanic world of the 21st century has to be something else; it has to be a cultural, economic, and political unity.
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