Konstruktionen der Konquista im Umfeld des Quinto Centenario. Mediale Inszenierungen im mexikanischen Drama und Film by Rowena Sandner (review)

Konstruktionen der Konquista im Umfeld des Quinto Centenario (Constructing the Conquest around the Fifth Centenary. Media-based Productions in Mexican Drama and Film) draws on literature and cultural studies to explore images of the Conquest in Mexican dramas and films produced in the environment of the 1992 celebrations (1968-2000), although Ridley Scott’s 1492-Conquest of Paradise has also been analyzed as an example of US-American and European neo-colonial discourse from which most Mexican authors and directors distance themselves, not only with regard to the messages they are trying to disseminate, but also due to substantially different objectives, conditions and budgets for production and marketing.

Sandner’s first three chapters explore the discursive framework in preparation for the text analysis. After an overall convincing introduction, the author focuses on the development of the so called Conquista discourse, a term which tries to summarize the wide spectrum of socio-political and cultural perspectives on the Conquest from colonial times to the celebrations of 1992 and beyond. While one could argue that this chapter is a bit descriptive and fragmentary, and that there might be room for improvement with regard to the overall structure (rather than starting with 1992 and then introducing the colonial context, it might have been clearer and less repetitive to start with the colonial discourse and explore the celebrations as part of neo-colonial politics), there can be no doubt that it gives a very informative, detailed and in-depth account of key perspectives on the Conquest. Particularly interesting is the third chapter insofar as it explores the aesthetic specifics and narrative codes of each medium, which helps to ensure the necessary differentiation within the text analysis chapters.

The text corpus for this analysis embraces directors of different generations, including Hugo Argüelles, Sergio Magaña, Sabina Berman, Alejandro Galindo and Juan Mora Catlett, which at the end allows Sandner to develop a sound overview of the new narrative of the Conquest in Mexico. However, in chapter 4, the author prefers to start with Scott’s 1492 in order to establish a contrasting background (‘Kontrastfolie’) for the exploration of Mexican productions. The idea itself is interesting in methodological terms, e.g. for a teaching program in which students could be encouraged to gather aspects of neo-colonial discourse from the film instead of starting from lecture notes (inductive <-> deductive). Admittedly, I am less convinced that it has to be an essential part of this PhD project, because the patterns of (neo-) colonial discourse are well researched and 1492 has little else to offer, as Sandner confirms (134). Also, it is perhaps not entirely convincing to build up Scott’s film to a key example of traditional discourse, since in many ways it is not representative of Spanish perspectives and a significant part of the Mexican narrative explored in this thesis could not draw on it (i.e. no ‘contrasting background’ or intertextual reference point for them), simply due to an earlier completion date. On the other hand, Sandner summarizes key research on 1492 quite convincingly and she adds interesting elements to it (e.g. parallels in composition between shots from the film and images from the Florentine code, 123), so the reader might as well accept chapter 4 as an additional extra.

In any case, the analysis of Mexican narrative starts with chapter five, and it is overall well structured according to key aspects of individual work. Under ‘identity discourse’, Sandner explores Alejandro Galindo’s El juicio de Martín Cortés, both as drama (1969) and film (1974), Sergio Magaña’s Los enemigos (1984), Juan Mora Catlett’s Retorno a Aztlán (1990) and Hugo Argüelles’ Águila real (1992). As parts of a ‘transculturality discourse’, she analyses Sergio Olhovich’s play Una hoguera al amanecer (1990) and its film adaptation Bartolomé de las Casas. La leyenda negra...