'Spanish America. Song of life and hope': National Catholicism to the reconquest of America

In

Latin America. Song of life and hope,

sponsored by the Community of Madrid, the San Pablo-CEU University and other institutions, José Luis López-Linares offers us something like a second part of his popular film about the first globalization, which finally became something very different, a defense of Spain against the supposed “black legend.” In this case, he tries to arrive, through the general discourse, the opinions of some commentators (not all historians and not all experts) and some of the most beautiful images of the exuberant Indian baroque as a wrapper, to a definition of Latin America. .

The author starts from the need to combat the image of the conquest of an idyllic pre-Hispanic society by barbaric Spaniards, the sword in one hand and the cross in the other. Now, this image at this point in historical studies is already an outdated and obsolete caricature, which can only be maintained either from a supreme ignorance or from the perverse intention of creating a ghost, an enemy that can be easily destroyed in order to establish an equally false narrative that presents another adulterated vision of reality, the one defended by the film. This narrative is built on the ideological foundations created in its day by Francoism, that is, by the wild and uncritical apology for the “work of Spain in America”, which in turn is based on the vindication of the fruitful expansion of Catholicism.

The allusion to the benefits of Catholicism permeates practically the entire discourse to hyperbolic extremes. The continuous allusion to the evangelizers, the image of Hernán Cortés kissing the missionaries' habit, the baptism of the indigenous people, the cult of the American virgins, even the procession in honor of Santiago Matamoros, bear witness to the intentions of the scriptwriters, who come to consider that the three most important “women” (sic) in the history of America were Isabel the Catholic (the insistence on whose figure makes us fear a new attempt at beatification), Malinche and the Virgin of Guadalupe, exalted by above the other Creole virgins (Ocotlán, Zapopan, Copacabana, Huápulo). Contributing to this impression is the fact that the film closes with the sung prayer of the Hail Mary.

The interspersing of some erratic pieces (such as the one dedicated to Madrigal de las Altas Torres, the accidental allusion to the Holy Spirit and the mention of the Genoese sailor Christopher Columbus, with the malevolent note of “if he was Genoese”, undervaluing the immense work of several generations of researchers), as well as the disconcerting mix of themes do not undermine the linearity of the apologetic argument. Let us add that the interventions of some prestigious historians are very brief and that the only one who seems to dare to refer to the economic-social system (the great Spanish historian living in Mexico Tomás Pérez Vejo) is almost cut off in his minimal speech. Finally, what is most surprising is the inclusion, among the musical pieces, of the famous song from

El emigrante

by Juanito Valderrama, which we assume makes an appearance because of his tribute to Spain.

There are more theses contrary to any modern research on the issue. Among them is the one that states that the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767 deprived America of the only barrier against the intrusion of French encyclopedism (the Frenchification, so reviled by conservative Spanish historiography), without pointing out the role that it played in the spread of the Enlightenment. In the New World, the great enlightened Americans played, the Creoles themselves imbued with rationalism. And the presentation of the liberator Simón Bolívar, which could not be more confusing, includes a frame from our time, on a poster where he is shown on the same level as President Hugo Chávez, which does not seem coincidental to those who, like the old Detectives, you hate coincidences. But we can stop here.

The bad thing is that what the speech shows has as much meaning as what it hides. Thus, the chronicle of the conquest omits the misdeeds committed by Vasco Núñez de Balboa in the Darién or the horrendous cruelties of Hernán Cortés (amputation of hands of the Tlaxcalan spies, massacre of Cholula, massacres of Tenochtitlan, atrocities of Tepeaca, torture and death of Cuauhtémoc). In the same way, although the Aztecs were always at war, however, there is no mention of the civil confrontations between Spaniards: the soldiers of Hernán Cortés facing those of Pánfilo de Narváez or the bloody wars in Peru between the Almagrists and the Pizarrists, to put it. Two examples.

More important is the lack of mention of the economic and social system implemented by the Spanish, of their ecological imperialism (in favor of an extractive industry, which had to constantly send gold and silver to Spain), of their fundamental institutions of the encomienda (which granted the conquerors of land to cultivate and Indians to work it) and of the mita (which instituted forced indigenous labor, especially hard in the mines of Peru), to the subjection and submission of the Indians to foreign authorities and to foreign cultural and religious guidelines. to their traditional ones. A large number of testimonies of protest can be collected: “Let us die now, let us perish now / since our gods have already died.” “Under strange empires, martyrdoms agglomerated, memory denied, destroyed, perplexed, lost, alone.”

Nor is there any reference to black people, to slaves, whose tragic fate was linked to the plantation economy. Claimed by the landowners, endorsed by the Catholic Church, slavery disappears from the film's discourse: nothing about the number of “Indian pieces” (a dehumanized term for African slaves), which reached at least two million and a half in the Spanish territories during the Old Regime, nothing about the capture in Africa, about the overcrowding on slave ships, about the suffering, undernourishment, mistreatment, barbaric punishments, inhuman work, the rape of women . Blacks would stain the pristine tapestry of Spanish America in the film.

Another gap that totally distorts the narrative about Latin America is the lack of a history of resistance. Resistance that occurred from the first to the last moment of Spanish domination. The indigenous woman can offer a multitude of examples in all spaces. If we ignore the years immediately following the conquest of Mexico, at least the survival of the Inca kingdom of Vilcabamba in the Andean mountain range and, even more so, the feat of the Chilean Araucanians is generally known. By the end of the 18th century, the revolts of the Seri and Pima in Sonora or the Yumas in California have also been widespread, and, above all, the great mobilizations of Túpac Amaru and Túpac Katari in the viceroyalty of Peru. And this is not to mention the permanent revolt of the black slaves quartered in their palenques and their quilombos.

Finally, the enemies of Bartolomé de las Casas (the “black beast” to be disqualified) forget the sermons of Antonio de Montesinos or the diatribes of Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo. They do not appear in the film because they would refute the discourse of national Catholicism that they try to instill in us in their crusade to “reconquer the past.”

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