Figural Conquistadors

He demonstrates how these novelists use major and marginal figures to reflect upon the ways that institutional powers invoke episodes from the discovery and conquest to legitimate the present, and also to critique the recent historical past, especially in the case of Uruguay and Argentina, which endured military dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s."--Jacket.

This Very Short Introduction examines the Spanish conquistadors who invaded the Americas in the sixteenth century, as well as the Native American Kingdoms they invaded.

An Open Access edition of this book will be available on the Liverpool University Press website and the OAPEN library. As the moment of the birth of the patria, Independence enjoys a privileged role in the historical imaginary of many Latin American nations. In Argentina as in other countries, the period has been fundamental to state discourses of nation-building and identity, lending its figures and central narratives a powerful symbolic function. It has also attracted significant literary attention, and this book offers an innovative reading of texts that provide irreverent, metafictional, or self-reflexive retellings of this foundational moment. This type of fiction is usually read through well-established frameworks on the contemporary Latin American historical novel that emphasise its destabilising of knowledge and single truths. Instead, this work foregrounds the much more immediate, concrete political points at stake when we read these texts through both their direct engagement with contemporary circumstances and the politics of the history they evoke. It therefore argues for a new approach to reading contemporary Latin American historical fiction that showcases its response to politically urgent questions.

A sweeping, authoritative history of 16th-century Spain and its legendary conquistadors, whose ambitious and morally contradictory campaigns propelled a small European kingdom to become one of the formidable empires in the world “The depth of research in this book is astonishing, but even more impressive is the analytical skill Cervantes applies. . . . [He] conveys complex arguments in delightfully simple language, and most importantly knows how to tell a good story.” —The Times (London) Over the few short decades that followed Christopher Columbus's first landing in the Caribbean in 1492, Spain conquered the two most powerful civilizations of the Americas: the Aztecs of Mexico and the Incas of Peru. Hernán Cortés, Francisco Pizarro, and the other explorers and soldiers that took part in these expeditions dedicated their lives to seeking political and religious glory, helping to build an empire unlike any the world had ever seen. But centuries later, these conquistadors have become the stuff of nightmares. In their own time, they were glorified as heroic adventurers, spreading Christian culture and helping to build an empire unlike any the world had ever seen. Today, they stand condemned for their cruelty and exploitation as men who decimated ancient civilizations and carried out horrific atrocities in their pursuit of gold and glory. In Conquistadores, acclaimed Mexican historian Fernando Cervantes—himself a descendent of one of the conquistadors—cuts through the layers of myth and fiction to help us better understand the context that gave rise to the conquistadors' actions. Drawing upon previously untapped primary sources that include diaries, letters, chronicles, and polemical treatises, Cervantes immerses us in the late-medieval, imperialist, religious world of 16th-century Spain, a world as unfamiliar to us as the Indigenous peoples of the New World were to the conquistadors themselves. His thought-provoking, illuminating account reframes the story of the Spanish conquest of the New World and the half-century that irrevocably altered the course of history.

The Conquistadors (1954) examines the discovery of the New World of South America and the spread from the Caribbean islands of adventurers in search of gold. Through sword and fire and torture they found gold, and in the process destroyed the great civilisations of Mexico and Peru.

The native people of the Americas never had a chance against European soldiers. The troops of the conquistadors had guns and armor, not to mention new diseases! As readers are drawn through the bloody history of early settlement in the New World, they’ll learn about the conquistadors’ wish for gold and to convert the native peoples to Christianity. Chapters focusing on major conquistadors—including de Coronado, Pizarro, Cortes, and more—incorporate major topics from the social studies curriculum. Full-color maps show the European domination of the Americas and enhance the main content’s detailed account of what they found there.

Adventurous explorer or ruthless imperialist? In 1519, Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés led a daring expedition to the heart of the Aztec Empire, in what is now central and southern Mexico. Within two years, this highly advanced civilization had fallen to the might of Cortés’s Spanish conquerors, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of Aztecs. This engaging title explores two cultures in conflict—and the personality of a man driven by both insatiable greed and service to his country.

Discusses the conquistadors who explored and conquered Latin America, such as Cortâez and Pizarro.

Current scholarship on Latin American historical fiction has failed to take feminism and postcolonialism into account. This study uses these important contemporary discourses as a starting point for a new definition of the Latin American historical novel that includes national identity, magical realism, historical intertextuality, and symbolism.

In the sixteenth century the King of Spain issued his soldiers with a three-pronged mission: to find gold, spread the word of Christianity and claim new territories for Spain. The Conquistadors, as they became known, set off into the world to do just that, and nothing was to stand in their way. Some say that the discovery of the New World is the greatest event in history. Others, that it amounted to the bloodiest massacre of all time. Conquistadors follows the Spanish explorers as they unleash their terrifying religious wrath upon the Inca and Aztec empires and explains how the conquest of the New World transformed the Old World forever. Contents The World of the Conquistadors The People of the New World, Warfare: Steel versus Stone,The Conquests of Hernán Cortés, Francisco Pizarro's Expeditions to Peru, Pizarro and the Incas, El Dorado: The Golden Man, The Real Life Don Quixote, Going Native, The Unconquerable Maya, New World Meets Old