Differences Between Victors And The Vanquished

In Victors and the Vanquished, Schwartz poses the question of “How can we evaluate conflicting sources” (ix)? Through reading historical events such as the “Conquest of New Spain” there is an undeniably large amount of destruction of cultural material and bias testimonies of events recorded up to several years after they occurred. After analyzing the Spanish Conquest of Mesoamerica there is a debatable amount of evidence from the Mesoamericans and Spanish explanations of this event in history. The intentions of each explanation created a conflict to historians, art historians and anthropologists on which viewpoint holds to accuracy. There is also the issue of not only accuracy but the motive behind each bias account. As many take these aspects

Bernal Diaz purposefully wrote with the idea of illustrating the truth of the conquest. Many recognize Diaz’s version of events was written several years following the conquest after he reads Gomara’s narrative of Cortes’ travels, he appears to write in spite but also with some good intentions. Diaz’s explanations detail the rivalry between the soldiers, sailors and Cortes. Diaz’s accounts also display some cultural differences between the two different peoples. For example, Diaz remarks the Mesoamericans as illustrators and not writers. Nonetheless, Diaz’s evidence shows more detail of the actual journey than Cortes but with this in consideration, this shows more of Cortes’ approach to understanding the Mesoamericans and gain for Spain and himself (Schwartz 79). For example, Diaz remembers the exchange of a chair to the Mesoamericans for their treasures and gold. Diaz also explains Cortes’ use of translators, whom themselves could hold biases against the parties they assist, groups of people indigenous to Mesoamerica or be untruthful to those they are assisting. This could be harmful too when understanding history because how do they know if they are not attempting to plan a battle with their townspeople? There is few ways to prove this theory now, but it is something to understand and keep in mind. Therefore, Diaz’s descriptions

The major issue with the Nahua accounts is their explanation of time, the Mesoamericans often jumped through sections of time and thought of the Spaniards of superior beings with unknown talents. Secondly, the accounts are more of an issue because they were purposefully destroyed by the Spanish. Many conspiracies claim the Spaniards destroyed the early form Mesoamerican art so that their beliefs of the conquest appeared real. But when Spanish missionaries entered Mesoamerica they were the ones who destroyed these accounts for their depictions of skulls and deemed Mesoamerican artwork as ugly or unappealing. As a result of this huge disregard for Mesoamerican culture, this ancient history is unrecoverable. Nahua accounts were also documented thirty years after the conquest, causing yet more discrepancies. Furthermore, Nahua statements were transcribed from drawings where they are later transcribed into words by Fray Bernardino de Sahagun in the Florentine Codex. Firstly, the Nahua people had no written language, until after the conquest. When the Spanish appeared their artistic documentations began to change. The Mesoamericans began to add shading, introduce a horizon line and some early understandings of perspective, completely abandoning their symbolism within their culture. Secondly, there could be some biases