Ames Krippner-Martínez. Rereading the Conquest. Power, Politics, and the History of Early Colonial Michoacán, Mexico, 1521–1565. Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001.

Abstract

The Conquest of Mexico has long been cast as a tale of villains and heroes. The dastardly Nuño de Guzmán, we have been told, was the cruelest of conquistadors, massacring Indians everywhere, particularly in Michoacán where he tortured and summarily executed Cazonci, despite the fact that the Purhépecha ruler had originally struck a deal with Hernán Cortés. Vasco de Quiroga stands at the other end of the spectrum. This learned humanist bishop, we are told, single-handedly built utopian village-hospitals in Michoacán to shelter the Indians from the likes of Nuño de Guzmán. In this Manichean narrative of the Conquest, natives are either killed or saved by Spaniards. James Krippner-Martínez seeks to restore some Indian agency conspicuously missing in such simpleminded accounts. More important, he seeks to explain how these narratives came about in the first place.