A Refreshing Reread

James Krippner-Martinez’s fine book excels, to my mind, on three accounts. First, as all good works of history should, Rereading the Conquest both adds to our understanding of the Conquest as well as questions some of the more deeply held assumptions about the personages of the era. Second, the author seamlessly interweaves the historiography of the Conquest (specifically, in this case, the historiography about the conquest of Michoacan) into his narrative and analysis, which serves the non-specialist reader exceptionally well. Third, Krippner-Martinez is concerned with broader questions regarding the study of history that every student should (perhaps must) incorporate into one’s mental methodology if one wishes to make significant contributions to his or her field.

I will begin by commenting on this last point. It is significant that Krippner-Martinez is working with few or no new materials here, as his title implies. With the exception of his last chapter and conclusion, which discuss more recent historiography, the text examines materials that have been known to scholars, and analyzed by them, for centuries. As concerns the Conquest and colonial eras in Michoacan, Mexico, of course, this makes sense, as there is a finite number of primary sources available. But I believe Krippner-Martinez is, at least implicitly, endeavoring to make a larger point: just because materials have been examined by multiple generations of scholars does not mean their value has been exhausted, or that all that remains is for younger historians to do minor mopping up work. Rather, it is incumbent upon students and scholars to re-evaluate their field of study and the materials therein as a whole, to ask questions that are more accurate and salient, which Professor Krippner-Martinez does very well.

To wit: The first chapter, “The Vision of the Victors,” examines the Proceso, the account of the trial of the Cazonci by the authority of Nuno de Guzman, traditionally one of the more disreputable of the conquistadors. By a careful reading, observing both what the record contains and what it omits, Krippner-Martinez arrives at two conclusions: that the Indians were not passive to the efforts of the Spaniards, lacking agency; and the conquistador (in this case Guzman) was not “abberrant and even pathological” but pragmatic and efficient, acting within the paradigms of his time and place (10). The author gives due credit to the tenuous nature of the document by explaining the multiple hands through which it passed (as many as four of rive in the case of the Native American testimonies), but argues, for the most part convincingly, that “This is not to say that the testimonies contained in this document are fraudulent or valueless” (15). Throughout this chapter, and the work as a whole, Krippner-Martinez emphasizes context. “We cannot understand the execution [of the Cazonci],” he writes, “unless we take into account the frustrations of the initial wave of Spanish settlers and their self-defined need to establish control over the region” (21). His careful, competent analysis of the material is appealing–one wishes that every author would write with such directness and clarity.

The author is also, it is fair to claim, writing with an agenda beyond a mere re-examination of the Conquest, and that, too, is refreshing. His descriptions of torture (including, on page 33, so-called “water torture”) are explicit, and are presented with an analysis of the significance of torture (personal dominance, not humiliation per se). Similarly, his descriptions of Beaumont’s later efforts to understand and justify what many (then and since) have considered the excesses of the Conquest raise larger questions about morality and the means to ends. A scholar who wishes to tackle serious historical events, Krippner-Martinez seems to be saying, must also tackle serious, and at times discomfiting, issues of morality–while striving to keep one’s own subjectivity under control. Indeed, at the book’s end, he explicitly denounced the ongoing efforts of the Catholic Church to present the “spiritual conquest” of the Americas as the result of divine will, stating, simply, “It is time for a change” (183). Even given the relative secularism of most of the academics I know, this strikes me as a gutsy statement.

The book is not without its flaws, however. For all his merits, Krippner-Martinez’s analysis  more than once descends into the realm of what one of my professors called “inside baseball.” That is, he knows the material so well that he is not always the most effective communicator. On page 34, for example, he briefly mentions the wel-known rivalry between Guzman and Cortes, asserting that “it is plausible to suggest that the Cazonci also may have been victimized by the factional politics of the conquerors themselves.” While he does later mention the rivalry, briefly, this statement is far too significant to lack further discussion, which the author does not provide. Another example is his examination of Beaumont’s Cronica in Chapter 4, in which he does not clearly introduce the Aparato to the non-specialist; it simply appears in the middle of the paragraph, leading this reader, for one, to go back and wonder if I had missed something  (I had not) (114-5).  At times we may question whether his efforts at reading against the grain are in fact not examples of his reading into the text assumptions about motives that can not be properly ascertained.

These are quibbles, however. While the above concerns are legitimate, they do not significantly detract from the value and accomplishment of the book. Rereading the Conquest is the work of a scholar at the top of his game. The work adds to the hisotiographical discussion by questioning old asumptions and articulating new questions–which themselves, the author understands, will be amended by future historians down the line. As he concludes, the point of his research (and, by extension, all historical investigation) “is not to deny the reality of the sixteenth century, but rather to note the historiographical distance that must be overcome to catch even a fleeting glimpse of the actual past” (191). For this student, that is certainly a mission statement worth keeping in mind.