Interpretations on the Post Conquest and Colonialism

¶ … Post Conquest/Colonialism

Post Conquest and Colonialism

In 1519, around 500 Spanish soldiers, called Conquistadors, marched into the Aztec Empire in what is today modern day Mexico, and within two years of their arrival that empire had been completely conquered. These men were under the command of Hernan Cortez, a man who would go down in history as the man who conquered Mexico. Since the conquest of Mexico by Cortez in the early 1500's, a new Mexican culture has evolved, one that has been heavily influenced by the Spanish conquest, destruction of the indigenous culture, and colonization. Writers like Octavio Paz, and Camilla Townsend have written about the influence of the Spanish conquest on the evolution of the culture of Mexico.

One of the first conclusion about the Spanish conquest of Mexico must be that it was an inevitability. While it may have been difficult, with the Spanish coming close to disaster on many occasions, the Europeans "…had the technological advantage. The outcome was no coincidence." (Townsend) Technology was the deciding factor in the conquest of Mexico by Cortez and his handful of men, but even if Cortez had failed, some other Spanish expedition would have eventually conquered the Aztecs. The Aztecs were essentially a "stone age" culture, while the Spanish technology "included not only blunderbusses and powder but also printing presses, steel blades and armor, crossbows, horses and riding equipment, ships, navigation tools-and…an array of diseases." (Townsend) Once the Europeans discovered the "New World," it was inevitable that they would eventually conquer it.

One of the results of the conquest by the Spanish has been the development of a Mexican culture that has been heavily influenced by the conquest. Modern Mexicans must rationalize the combination of their native culture with that of their Spanish conquerors. The result has been a culture that is in conflict with itself. Octavio Paz, in his Mexican Masks, discusses this duality of Mexican culture and describes it as a culture where everyone wears masks to "build a wall of indifference and remoteness between reality and himself" (Paz 29-47) This wall of separation between the Mexican and reality comes, in part, from the nature of the Spanish conquest and colonization. The separate indigenous peoples, cultures, languages, and religions were destroyed en masse, and the survivors enslaved by the Spanish. The Spanish made no cultural distinction between their subject peoples and as a result, the modern Mexican culture is one that has been forged and shaped by the conquerors. Indigenous beliefs and traditions have been corrupted and subverted by the Spanish conquerors, for instance, the cult of Our Lady of Guadalupe is actually a subversion of the indigenous Aztec goddess Tonantzin's cult by Spanish Christians.

Because of the nature of the Spanish conquest and occupation and the subsequent culture that developed in Mexico, there is a kind of solitude which each Mexican must endure. Paz argues that this solitude is a reaction that tends to oscillate between extremes of "macho" and "modesty." These diametrically opposed cultural traits have led Mexican culture to what many, including Paz, believe is a loss of identity. Mexican culture is, at the same time, aggressive and passive, but its aggressiveness, manifested in the male as "macho," is an empty attempt at self-deception and bolstering. The passiveness of Mexican culture, represented by the humiliating rape and destruction of the indigenous peoples, is considered the feminine aspect of Mexican culture. The male aspect is so over-the-top bold and masculine because the Mexican culture that evolved was so traumatized by the conquest and colonization. Mexican culture contains such an underlying amount of femininity, represented by the influence of the rape of conquest, that it seems to overcompensate with an outward expression of "macho." And since "the essential attribute of the "macho" - power - almost always reveals itself as a capacity for wounding, humiliating, annihilating," "macho" is the attempt by Mexican culture to overcome the wounding, humiliation, and annihilation of the indigenous culture by the Spanish conquest and colonization. (Paz 65-89)