An 1869 engraving of the conquest of Mexico.
The current discussion of what happened 500 years ago takes place behind the lenses that official history has placed on us.
These distortions seem to guide much of the debate and explain the reactions that can be seen from both sides of the Atlantic.
From the outset, many of our ideas are vitiated by basic assumptions that frequently prevent us from detailing the discussion and, above all, relating what happened five centuries ago with current problems.
A few weeks ago I began the process of reviewing the discussion that took place in 1992 about another five hundred years, those of the fifth centenary of the arrival of Christopher Columbus to a continent that was later called America in the current hegemonic languages. I have been very careful in choosing the verb "arrive" because I want to show that even the name of what happened in 1492 was and is subject to a dispute that shows great complexity in its reading. It is very interesting for me to inquire about the discussions, the semantic and discursive disputes that took place in 1992 and the similarities and differences that can be found with respect to the discussions and disputes that, from different positions and contexts, are taking place during this year in the 500th anniversary of the fall of the city of Tenochtitlan.
Since the 1980s, Spanish institutions anticipated that 1992 would be the year of the fifth centenary of something they called, and had historically called, "the discovery of America." Since 1983, the National Commission of the Fifth Centennial attached to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was created in Spain, there was also a high board headed by King Juan Carlos himself. This commission was part of the first meeting of national commissions on the subject held in 1984. The Mexican representation had a coordinator in Miguel León Portilla who would be a fundamental part of the discussions that took place in different media and spaces. It should be noted that the Mexican commission was not headed by members of indigenous peoples or Afro-descendants, which says a lot about the context,a moment in which official policy had had its main response to integrationist indigenism to what the post-voculutionary governments had called, on many occasions, "the indigenous problem." Much less was said about the history of Afro-descendant peoples than now.
At the 1984 meeting, the Mexican delegation raised an objection on the name up front. Rather than celebrating the "discovery of America", they proposed for 1992 a commemoration of something that should be called "the meeting of two worlds"; argued that a commemoration, more than a celebration, could give room for a more complex reflection on what happened in 1492. In accordance with these ideas, in 1985, Miguel de la Madrid, created the National Commemorative Commission of the Encounter of Two Worlds with Miguel León Portilla at the head as well as Guillermo Bonfil Batalla and Roberto Moreno de los Arcos, among several others.
The discussions about the name and the verb to be used showed that any choice implied a position from the outset: celebrate or commemorate, discover or meet, America or two worlds. The reactions from different contexts did not wait: neither encounter nor discovery, what began in 1492 was an invasion, it was the beginning of a genocide and the massive slavery of the Afro-descendant population, other voices replied. Although the position of the official Mexican delegation timidly nuances the celebrations of a discovery when speaking of the meeting of two worlds, soon, voices from indigenous peoples ignored by the ruling party, made themselves heard to highlight positions that insisted that it was not never the neutral encounter between only two worlds.The rest of the countries of this continent established official positions that evidenced the fact that the creation of these states was in most cases a project of the Creole elites. In their positions, they spoke of the union of peoples, of a historical epic, of the celebration of the Iberian heritage and even, of a necessary fact, to achieve the existence of the current nations. In extremes far from the nuances, for example, Carlos Menem, president of Argentina in those years, even accepted the name of "discovery of America" and other leaders of the continent only qualified the proposal that was raised from Spain that, after the meetings , ended up including that of the meeting in the name that was as follows: Fifth Centennial of the Discovery of America and Meeting of Two Worlds.Discursively speaking, the official positions of most countries show that they behaved as if they were still colonies of the metropolis.
In Mexico, faced with the official position of the meeting of two worlds proposed by León Portilla, an interesting controversy was unleashed when the historian Edmundo O'Gorman published a text entitled "Neither discovery nor encounter" that gave an account of the problems of the choice of both Names. Despite this interesting discussion between Leon Portilla and O'Gorman, it is important to note the absence, in official spaces and in the mainstream media, of voices from the peoples that had historically suffered the consequences of the events that occurred five hundred years earlier. However, far from the official delegations that did not include the voice of the indigenous peoples of this continent or the Afro-descendant populations, alternative movements began to take shape that would have different manifestations in 1992 in several countries.These movements read 1492 in another key that highlighted the validity of the effects of colonialism and that put in crisis the official positions of the official commissions.
What happened around 1992 reminds us, for these other 500 years, of the importance of the choice of words and the choice of voices that enter the debate. We need a diverse concert of voices that discuss in the public arena about what happened five centuries ago in the central highlands of Mexico to achieve a kaleidoscope that can bring us closer to the historical complexities of 1521 and, therefore, of 2021 . The conquest of Mexico? The fall of Tenochtitlan? The establishment of the colonial order? Who and how are they naming?