In the Shadow of Cortés

Kathleen Ann Myers refers to her new book as a “reflective essay” (p. vii). Using the trope of the route of Hernán Cortés, it is a reflection on Mexican history and identity—local, regional, and national—as articulated largely through the voices of more than 100 interviewees residing along the alleged route. The text is divided into four major sections, organized geographically, on Veracruz, the highland interior of Tlaxcala and Puebla, Mexico City, and, finally, “el otro lado,” or Mexicans in the United States. In each section Myers both narrates a history of the conquest, and of Mexico more broadly, and reproduces interviews and interactions with residents along the route. At the end of each section Myers includes longer selections from her interviews. Throughout the book Myers seeks to highlight three common threads: first, how the conquest resonates among her interviewees based in part on where they are physically located; second, the place of indigenous peoples in the contemporary polity; and third, the more recent “conquests” experienced by many in Mexico, including a growing US economic, political, and cultural hegemony (hence, one presumes, the inclusion of “the other side” in the final part of the book).The book makes for fascinating reading. Unlike most authors who have used the route of Cortés as a means for reproducing tired stereotypes of Spanish cruelty amid majestic landscapes, as a method for boosting book and journal sales, or as a way to engage in an unreflective and titillating reconquest of Mexico, Myers uses the route to facilitate reflections on history, contemporary politics, and cultural life by residents of Mexico themselves. The result is a multifaceted exploration of Mexican history and identity as articulated by a wide range of residents: artists, priests, activists, historians, cronistas, homemakers, teachers, taxi drivers, foreign residents, protesting artisans, and tourist office employees, among many others. The thematic coverage is similarly impressive, including cultural imperialism; the internal dynamics between those who identify as mestizo, Spanish, or native; the legacy of the conquest but also the legacies of Mexico's revolutions for independence from Spain (1810), the church (1850s), and the latifundio (1910); issues of political corruption and social injustice; the complexities and consequences of the North American Free Trade Agreement; national and regional identity; and the Zapatista National Liberation Army. Such themes are raised not necessarily by Myers herself but by her interviewees, thus giving the reader a sense of the range of issues that end up being addressed as a response to open-ended and broad questions.There are issues that deserved to be raised. For one, it is hard to avoid the impression that in some way Myers, by using the trope of the “route of Cortés,” has inadvertently stacked the deck in advance. She started with a very basic yet loaded question: “What do you think about Cortés and the conquest of Mexico?” (pp. 42–43). While the breadth of the question often served successfully as a prompt to revealing and varied conversations, at times one is left wondering the degree to which the presence of the past and the conquest of Mexico were issues that emerged from the prompt rather than ones that organically emerged from a broader conversation about the past and the present. In other words, the question that Myers posed was bound to yield answers that would, in Myers's own words, show “how the conquest permeates popular and official culture in Mexico” (p. vii). Yet the most interesting material in the book is that which ranges far beyond the narrow confines of the conquest. Myers herself recognizes this and yet finds herself being pulled toward the conquest trope over the course of the book. It is not a fatal flaw by any means, but it does mean that the book at times feels a bit schizophrenic. In part this may also be due to the fact that the book needed a stronger editorial hand. It is lengthy, and while the interviews are original and rich source material, their power is diluted by the sheer profusion of voices and lengthy transcriptions. Indeed, the weakest parts of the text are the sections in which Myers transcribes selections from interviews rather than weaving them into the broader historical, political, and economic histories that she traces. It is when she exerts some measure of authorial control—not leaving the interviews to speak for themselves—that the text is most valuable and interesting. Myers is an attentive listener, and the book is at its best when she strikes a nice triangulated balance between her historical narratives, her interviewees' voices and concerns, and her own efforts to link those voices and concerns to larger cultural and political phenomena. Throughout the text, for example, Myers uses the interviews as apertures through which to address complex questions related to ethnicity, commercialism, anachronism, presentism, and the like. She does not go into such issues with much theoretical depth, but she handles them deftly and with an accessible elegance, amplifying rather than diminishing the voices of those whom she interviewed. This should make the book especially appealing for undergraduates, who will find in it a valuable introduction to the long sweep of Mexican history and the presence of that past in the lives, minds, and voices of Mexican residents today

Ancient history · CONQUEST · Hegemony · Indigenous · Political science · Politics · Polity · Shadow (psychology) · Sociology · History · Latin American and Latino Studies · Law