Conference:México: La Conquista-Independencia-Adaptación:1521-1821-2021 that is scheduled to take place on November 10th virtually. We are grateful to the sponsors of this virtual conference: UC Berkeley Library, Center for Latin American Studies, and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese of UC Berkeley.
Two hundred years ago today, Mexico signed the Declaration of Independence from the Spanish Empire (Acta de Independencia del Imperio Mexicano). The conference is dedicated to noting some critical landmark dates in the history of Mexico and Latin America. I am also attaching an image of a conference poster that our library’s communications team members have created. We also note that the image used for this poster is from Codex Yoalli Ehecatl (also known formerly as Codex Borgia).
We are grateful to all faculty members across our continent who will be speaking at this conference. All are welcome to attend with prior registration the whole forum or its parts as you see fit in your busy workday.
What are some of the primary sources that are now open access and can be used to inform us about the events that unfolded five hundred years ago? One such source is Bernal Díaz del Castillo’s is work, “Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España.” On the right, one sees a title page of the 1632 imprint of the same that is available in Google Books.
The painting, such as the one below, is one example from the Library of Congress’ collection. Can images narrate the nuanced past accurately? These images are from the LOC’s exhibition and also in Wikimedia commons.
But where are the voices of those who were conquered but not vanquished? Can we rely on Codex Florentinoas one perhaps contested source? The WDL (from the collection of Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana) has made it available for the readers to judge the process that began with the conquest of Tenochtitlán. The LOC’s description reads, “Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva España” (General History of the Things of New Spain), as the Florentine Codex is formally known, is an encyclopedic work about the people and culture of central Mexico compiled over a period of 30 years by Fray Bernardino de Sahagún (1499–1590), a Franciscan missionary who arrived in Mexico in 1529, eight years after completion of the Spanish conquest by Hernan Cortés. The text is in Spanish and Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs. Its 12 books, richly illustrated by indigenous artists, cover the Aztec religion and calendar, economic and social life, Aztec history and mythology, the use of plants and animals and the Spanish conquest as seen through the eyes of the native Mexicans.”
I leave you with unfinished thoughts. Can a manuscript tell the story? See for yourself by watching Getty Researcher Institute’s five-part series. And with Taibo’s, “¿Historia para qué?”I love Paco Ignacio Taibo II’s argument about who we are? And his questioning of sanitization history where Cortes and Cuauhtemōc are dancing La Sandunga.
