Aztec Identity and Colonialism in La Otra Conquista

Introduction: Colonialism and the Limits of Cultural Erasure

The film La Otra Conquista captures the complexity of the colonial process: even after he becomes known as Tomás, the protagonist Topiltzin never loses his Aztec identity. The brutal use of force against the indigenous people of Mexico could not alone have erased the collective memories, dreams, and experiences of those who survived. Historians have repeatedly pointed out the all-encompassing ways in which colonial social systems and institutions transformed life for the indigenous people of Mesoamerica. Even the most "basic institutions" such as "family, marriage, and access to property" — the issues that affect daily life as well as the long-term survival of individual identity and community — would become "Europeanized."¹ Yet it would be impossible for indigenous memory to end completely with the conquests. Collective memory is not so easily erased.

Moreover, the indigenous people's customs, values, worldviews, and beliefs sometimes permeate and permanently alter those of the conquistadores. As La Otra Conquista shows, colonization does impose formal systems of power and subordination over the conquered people, but at the same time, colonial powers depend on the conquered people — at the very least as a labor force, and also for maintaining ongoing political legitimacy. Therefore, the indigenous people subtly merged their practices, values, beliefs, language, customs, and folklore into those of the newly dominant culture.

Titulos Primordiales and the Preservation of Historical Memory

One of the ways indigenous people resisted surrender — clinging to and reaffirming their cultures — was through the titulos, which helped "protect them and help protect historical memory."² The preservation of land boundaries, even when arbitrary, created an ongoing survival technique. Even when a land boundary was not linked directly to ancestral territory, the current body of indigenous people could determine for themselves how to define their relationship to the colonial or nationalistic powers seeking to dominate them. Rather than surrendering to whatever methods of dissipation, segregation, or dispersion colonial or national governments presented, indigenous people could use original land titles and "entitlement" as a means of defending their pride, stories, and sacred spaces.

The process of re-creating entitled spaces refers back to the "malleable nature of indigenous historical narrative."³ Its malleability does not in any way negate the fundamental truth of the overarching structure and semantics of the indigenous historical narrative. As narrative, indigenous histories preserve the integrity of the culture in ways that no other collective method can accomplish. These histories have been preserved and passed on in the face of brutal opposition and oppression, as depicted in La Otra Conquista.

Blood Purity, Limpieza de Sangre, and Social Stratification

Even when it seemed as though Topiltzin was ready to cede his identity to the Catholics — reborn as Tomás — he ultimately recognized the importance of protecting his bloodline. Bloodline was a characteristic common to both the indigenous and the conquering colonialists, and indigenous people used the concept in a creative and unique way to manage their status and role in the colonial social and political landscape. By capitalizing on the Spanish notion that "pure" blood was preferable to impure blood even independent of race, the indigenous people generated their own elite social class. Rather than "forgetting" that Aztec social hierarchies had been immutable, the sixteenth-century native peoples of Mexico "remembered" how significant bloodlines had always been to ruling classes, priests, and monarchs.

The sixteenth-century Spaniards who conquered the Americas brought with them the belief that being "pure" of blood conferred elite status. This concept of "limpieza de sangre," or blood purity, was also something that Aztec elites could relate to because of similar sets of prejudices and beliefs.⁴ Even if the preservation of "blood purity" was not always done consciously, indigenous peoples managed to negotiate a higher social status than they might otherwise have achieved, by demonstrating fluency in Spanish customs and values.

The limpieza de sangre concept was therefore held in common by the elites of both the conquistadores and the indigenous. It created important social, political, and economic class stratifications in colonial Mexico. To "remember" who they were, the Aztecs celebrated age-old social stratifications that did nothing to create an egalitarian society but at least helped to preserve the culture of the people. Class stratifications did enable the ongoing oppression of underclass individuals and communities deemed tainted by the blood of other races. Especially as the broad economic goals of Spanish colonialism became apparent with the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the notion of race became extremely important to the forging of Mexican identities and to determining one's position and role in society. The elite "pure-blooded" indigenous — such as Topiltzin in La Otra Conquista — could exempt themselves from slavery, whereas mestizo or African slaves could not remove themselves from the massive labor pool. Both the Spanish elite, who deemed their blood free from taints such as Moorish or Jewish heritage, and the indigenous elite, who deemed their blood free from taints of European, African, or other tribal heritages, could thereby establish themselves as a ruling class with access to wealth and power.⁵

Conclusion: Topiltzin as Microcosm of Indigenous Survival

The film The Other Conquest depicts one man's struggle against assimilation. His struggle is a microcosm of the collective struggle of the indigenous people of Central America. Topiltzin represents the way Aztec people have synthesized their beliefs, symbols, values, and worldviews with those of the Old World. It was Topiltzin who followed the Virgin statue, demonstrating that he and his people retained the power to decide how the narrative of their people would play out in the future.

The indigenous people of Mexico may have lost vast numbers of their kin and multiple elements of their customs, languages, religions, and cosmologies, but they managed to reclaim identity and dignity through conscientious and collective remembering. The titulos primordiales and indigenous land maps reflect a living and vivid indigenous memory during Mexico's Colonial Era, rather than mere accommodation and adaptation to Spanish rule. Those titulos preserved harsh social class stratifications that entrenched disparities, while also offering the means by which the underclass could continually assert their power.

References

Katz, Friedrich. "Rural Uprisings in Preconquest and Colonial Mexico." In Riot, Rebellion, and Revolution. Princeton University Press, 1988.

Medrano, Ethelia Ruiz. "Indigenous Negotiation to Preserve Land, History, Titles, and Maps: Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries." In Mexico's Indigenous Communities. University Press of Colorado, 2010.

Villella, Peter B. "Pure and Noble Indians, Untainted by Inferior Idolatrous Races." Hispanic-American Historical Review 91, no. 4 (2011): 633–663.