In comparison to last week's prompt and text, I found this reading to be much more dry and easier to comprehend. Restall focused this week on explaining the Myths of Miscommunication and Desolation. As compared to the first assigned text, talking about the Myth of Exceptional Men, Myth of an Invisible army, and the Myth of a King's army, the topics we read about for this week seemed to be more of an obvious ones, whereas somebody may not have known the the Conquistadors were of different races and trades.
Is it not obvious for us to assume that Pizzaro would take natives back to Spain to teach them Spanish, then bring them back for translation purposes? (Restall 88) In my opinion, this would be one of the most obvious things to do, to ensure your future success in trading with the Natives. However, Restall in the beginning of the fourth chapter talks about the first meeting between Cortes and the Aztecs. He says that even though the Aztecs may have seen inferior, it was there way of showing that the Spaniards were welcome. In diaries written of this account from a Spanish perspective, it was because they believed that the Aztecs had no choice. Thus we see that the same action had taken place, but it was due to a different meaning. I think that this is one of the biggest examples of miscommunication, or rather, misinterpreting.
I don’t know if it is obvious to most to assume that Pizarro would need to take natives back to Spain. To me the most obvious thing would be to send them back to Cuba to teach them Spanish for there must have been a teacher of sorts, perhaps a religious figure that could have taught the natives Spanish. I believe this act was more to show the exploits of his campaign. Like a hunter’s trophy, Pizarro used the natives as props to further gain support for his expeditions. I was interested in reading what Restall had to say about the initial meetings between the Mexica and Cortez, for I have always seen this “inferiority” as natural, especially being taught about the conquest by the American educational system and through “educational” specials on television. To assume that the natives truly believed that these Spaniards were gods, returned to retake their prior positions would be too simple. The Mexica were just doing what anybody does for guests and that is to invite them into their homes as humbly as possible so as not to insult the guest or incite some sort of hostile act. Something else that was interesting to me was to see they myth that if the natives truly did see the Spaniards as gods then they would to have accept their deaths as being divine, when in fact the natives were not ignorant but knew that if they were gods they would have died just as men.
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting that the first half of Restall focuses on myths dealing with the people involved in the Conquest and the second half is more about their actions. I particularly was interested in the communication and translation part of this half. The fact that Cortes would say something in Spanish that Aguilar would translate into Maya and Malintzin would then translate that into Nahua shows that the Spaniards had to get a little inventive on how to communicate with these people. I also agree that the explanation that the natives believing the Spaniards are gods is far too simple. It's far more believable that the natives were just giving the Spaniards a sign of respect than that they believed that these people were gods. I hardly think the Spaniards were qualified to come across all sanctified, they just didn't cut it with the cherubim. But enough Road to El Dorado references, Restall points out that the reason all of these myths exist is because every person's version of one event is different as he demonstrates in the epilogue. For some people, the Nahua nobles that were killed deserved to die, for others their deaths were wicked and unnecessary. This ties back to what we discussed earlier about history in general and how some sources may not be as accurate as others because of this. I think that is the argument for this book in general. It is near impossible to get a completely truthful account of one event in history because everyone's take on a story will be slightly different.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Angela. With history we must keep in mind where sources are coming from. Focusing on the argument of miscommunication we must examine chapter 5 closely. Of course one of the main examples is La Malinche, which surprisingly received the same respect from the natives as from the Spanish (83). She became a vital key in the conquest era and was viewed as powerful. Ironically, it was debated that she could be perceived as a traitor to her own kind, but she was a “feminist icon” (86).
ReplyDeleteIt goes with what we were talking about in one of our previous classes that we need to think outside the box. We need to realize that the Spanish were not the great warriors, they were able to achieve conquest through the aid of the native translators like La Malinche and Aguilar. As most of you all have pointed, the chapter makes it very obvious in disproving the myth. Restall argues that the Spainards were able to “conquest by (mis)communication” (85). Restall also claims that Cortes achieved conquest “less with his sword than with his words” (90). The idea of how educated or subordinate were the natives even follows into the following chapter. It’s not that the natives were of lesser value, they had a different way of thinking like the Europeans. Nonetheless, their culture and language attributed to the same misinterpretation Europeans felt through translation. There is a natural imbalance, that didn’t put one empire over the other. The myth that the Spaniards were of greater strength or because they were more advanced does not define why there were able to conquer the great native nations.