On the Uses of the Past and Its Constructions

James Krippner-Martinez. Rereading the Conquest: Power, Politics, and the History of Early Colonial Michoacan, Mexico, 1521-1565. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001.

The date in Krippner-Martinez’s title rather belies the actual content of the book. His study is as much about post-conquest, post-sixteenth century constructions and memories of the conquest and the early period of Spanish control of Michoacan, as it is about the period itself. While the book is composed of what Krippner calls ‘autonomous essays,’ they all have the unifying theme of a close reading and questioning of various constructed records of the past- some of them created long after the described events. Many of the archives and narratives Krippner examines operate out of a colonial matrix, something he is intent to demonstrate; because of the location of these narratives, even when they include indigenous or otherwise dissenting voices, Krippner argues, they are only speaking through the medium of the conqueror.

While this is not a new argument, obviously, and Krippner is not the first to subject the materials he covers to such a reading, the usefulness of the studies he includes lies in their questioning of even those aspects of the Spanish conquest and post-conquest that would at first glance seem to contradict the general thread of violence and exploitation. Krippner argues that even the Franciscans and such seemingly revolutionary clerics as Vasco de Quiroga are also part of the process of Spanish conquest and consolidation of power. While they may modify and even critique elements of the process, they are integral to it, and do not question the basic propriety of Spanish control of the ‘New World.’ Likewise, Krippner argues, depictions of ‘aberrant’ conquistadors, like Nuno de Guzman, serves to reinforce the basic rightness of the conquest. de Guzman and those like him become explanations of evil and excessive violence; their depraved behavior, distinct from the wider process of conquest, is aberrant and therefore not to be identified with the larger project. Against this Krippner argues that even men like de Guzman were a part of the process, and their violence in fact necessary for it to succeed. Far from being aberrant, they were a integral part- both in what they actually did, and the narrative role they later served in justifying and defending the conquest itself.

Krippner however is as much concerned with how these events were looked at in later years- from the 18th chronicle of Pablo Beaumont to contemporary understandings and uses of the figure of Vasco de Quiroga. The figures and events of the conquest and its immediate aftermath continue to be employed for a wide variety of actors, from conservative Catholics to their anticlerical opponents in the revolutionary and post-revolutionary periods. These constructions, Krippner contends, can tell little about the past itself, but reveal much about the ways the past can be employed. A figure like de Quiroga, in particular, lends himself to discovery and reconstruction, from the understanding of his ideological standing to the literal physical location of his bones. Much like de Quiroga’s bones- which underwent a spectrum from neglect to pseudo-scientific investigation to honored veneration- the events of the conquest and its later memory has undergone many transformations, and continues to be an object of use, of contestation, and deeply-held memory and emotion.