On Diaz, iii.-- Castile! Castile! Tlaxcala! Tlaxcala!

One of the most striking things I found in Diaz’s narrative was the place of indigenous allies- granted, at times they are marginalized, but they also appear frequently and sometimes with full (or at least considerable) respect and recognition. It becomes increasingly clear as the narrative unfolds that calling this the ‘Spanish Conquest’ is deeply misleading. The ranks of Castilian and Tlaxcalan becomes harder to distinguish; in the final grueling chapter of back-and-forth urban/aquatic warfare, the alliance is always in view, even when the allies take a temporary break- a Tlaxcala cacique suggests a winning strategy for weakening the Mexica supply-lines, and Diaz admits the impetuous Spaniards could not have proposed it themselves. Certainly, Diaz projects his own people as being at the fore, but it doesn’t take a particularly close reading to see the vital importance of Diaz’s ‘brothers’ as he calls them. The most remarkable expression of the multi-ethnic, if you will, nature of the campaign is in the two instances of the joint battle-cry in which Castile and Tlaxcala are linked together, two polities under one great King, united under a common Lord (temporal for certain and increasingly the same spiritual Lord, leaving aside the question of what a converting Tlaxcala thought exactly of his new comrades’ faith).

In Diaz’s eyes, the symmetry between the two groups is more important than cultural differences: the indigenous nobility are an especially important point of contact and understanding and interpretation for Diaz. Whether noble women being given in marriage (whose status within the text is quite distinct from the ‘pretty Indian women’ Diaz and the others wrangle over further along) or the various chiefs and lords with whom the Castilians both spar and ally, or even Montezuma (and, at the very end, Guatemoc), Diaz is quite capable of perceiving and depicting these men and women as worthy of honour and respect, even admiration. On this level, Diaz is quite comfortable with retaining the indigenous ‘inscription’ of themselves, even as he desires and endorses a change of religious structure. He is able to sympathetically imagine indigenous social structures and the individuals that make them up, and disentangle them to some extent at least from those elements that he finds more distasteful. Even the Spaniards’ unremitting enemies can earn respect for their bravery- the theme of respect and even admiration for one’s enemies harkening back to the Crusades. Indeed, this same power of sympathetic imagination with those perceived to be similar to oneself, especially the elite nobility and their ways of doing things, is reminiscent of Crusader accounts, right down to the important- but often fairly isolate- criticism of religious practice.

At the risk of manipulating the past and out memory and perceptions on behalf of present concerns, this sympathetic imagination- within limits, albeit- is certainly a refreshing contrast to the ideological blinkering of the modern age. Whether dealing with class enemies or terrorists, the tendency of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries seems to be more towards an ideological collapse of the enemy, into a mere pastiche of evil, an empty caricature to be filled with the ideologues’ fear and hatred. The Islamic terrorist, for instance, has no motivations beyond hatred and violence (‘terror’ embracing everything), and can be brooked no grounds whatsoever for admiration or respect, but can only be castigated and demonized. For Diaz, in keeping with medieval precedents, one can simultaneously imagine the non-Christian enemy, the enemy Other, as vile and demonic, and as a brave and courageous fighter, who more often than not partakes- or is perceived to partake at least- of roles and practices also found in one’s own society, erasing some of the distance. The Mexica may cut your comrade’s heart out and eat it, but you can still honour their nobles and admire the wonders of their vast city and its floating gardens. And even if this sympathetic imagination is limited to texts, if one so wished to argue, it is still there in the texts, and even that is something but rarely found in the modern age…