Conquistadors: from heroes to NGO ushers

From sword to NGO: the war over the image of the conquistadors

The effort to sugarcoat the conquest of the Americas has crossed a line: the debate is no longer whether the conquistadors were heroes or villains, but whether it is acceptable to portray them as a humanitarian aid brigade. The Hispanist movement, which champions Spain's legacy in the Americas, has launched a whitewashing campaign that irritates critics and professional historians almost equally. At the heart of the clash, the pink legend collides head-on with the black legend, and the result is a noise in which historical truth tiptoes past.

When the pink legend becomes caricature

The contrast is hard to sustain. One strand of the official narrative insists on presenting Spanish expansion as a civilizing project, with friars translating Mesoamerican languages to evangelize more effectively. The response from the other trench does not yield: if you arrive with a different culture, language and blood, subjugate the population and erase its roots, you are not an international NGO. In between, some analyses call for shedding presentism: neither were the indigenous peoples hippies under attack, nor were the conquistadors aid workers.

The image that set it off

The specific trigger was the spread of an allegedly manipulated image. In the version circulating, part of a conquistador's nose would have been erased with editing software, and a speech bubble with the phrase "Christ the King" that did not appear in the original has been superimposed. At the same time, the veracity of a supposed descendant of the Apache leader Geronimo, presented as proof of the process's benevolence, has been called into question. The spread of fabricated material fuels the suspicion that the defense of Hispanidad rests on smoke and mirrors.

As long as the two legends continue to dominate the discussion, the likely outcome is that the battle will degrade before it matures. The risk is that, in the middle of the fray, the only thing that matters gets lost: a story that needs no makeup.