Mexican Historian Zunzunegui: "We identify with the Aztecs, the greatest oppressor & exploiter in all the history of Mesoamerica. We are crazy. The story we tell ourselves has no future...If you love a Mexico, the Mexico we would be if the Spanish had never arrived, you are useless. You are of no use to Mexico because you love a product of your own imagination. That is why it is time to tell ourselves a different story"
The Lie You Were Told About Mexico
Watch "Las Mentiras Que Te Contaron Sobre México" on YouTube
Transcription:
"We are always on the side of the defeated. We are always on the side of the weak. But we identify with the Aztecs, the greatest oppressor and exploiter in all the history of Mesoamerica. We are crazy. The story we tell ourselves has no future. The story we tell ourselves will not lead us anywhere. There is a real Mexico. The real Mexico is the product of the fact that everything that happened actually happened. There is only one Mexico that exists, this one. The only Mexico that you can love, this one. The only Mexico that you can move forward with your work, this one. And this only Mexico that exists, the only one you can move forward with your work, the only one you can love, is the result of the fact that Hernán Cortés did arrive, is the result of the fact that Spain did arrive, is the result of... It is the result of the fact that Tenochtitlán did fall. It is the result of the fact that there were alliances between the Indigenous peoples and the Spanish Crown. The only Mexico that you can love is the result of the fact that everything that happened actually happened, actually happened. If you love a Mexico, the Mexico we would be if the Spanish had never arrived, you are useless. You are of no use to Mexico because you love a product of your own imagination. That is why it is time to tell ourselves a different story."
Notes:
ChatGPT:
This is a forceful argument against a romanticized, counterfactual view of Mexican identity. Its central claim is that Mexico cannot be understood—or loved honestly—by imagining away the historical events that brought it into existence. But the argument also raises an important question: does recognizing the historical reality of the Spanish conquest require defending everything Cortés and the Spanish Crown did?
1. The central argument
The speaker makes five connected claims.
First, the defeated are not necessarily the innocent. Identifying automatically with those who lost a war can turn historical judgment into a moral reflex. The Aztec Empire was not simply a victim of Spanish aggression; it also exercised imperial domination over other Mesoamerican peoples.
Second, the Aztec Empire was not identical with Mexico. The modern Mexican nation emerged from a historical process involving Indigenous civilizations, Spanish conquest, Indigenous alliances with the Spanish, colonial society, and subsequent political transformations. To treat the Aztec Empire as the authentic Mexico is to confuse one predecessor of Mexico with the entire nation.
Third, historical reality cannot be undone by imagination. The speaker insists that modern Mexico is the product of everything that actually happened, including the fall of Tenochtitlán in 1521. A hypothetical Mexico without the Spanish conquest may be an interesting subject of speculation, but it is not the Mexico that exists.
Fourth, love of country must begin with the country that actually exists. Patriotism cannot depend on an imagined past purified of historical complications. To love Mexico honestly means accepting its Indigenous and Spanish inheritances, along with the conflicts, injustices, and achievements that shaped them.
Fifth, historical memory should serve the future. The purpose of history is not merely to assign permanent roles of victim and oppressor. It should help Mexicans understand their actual inheritance and decide what to build upon it.
2. The strongest historical point: the Indigenous allies
The argument becomes particularly persuasive when it recognizes that the conquest was not simply a contest between Spaniards and Indigenous peoples.
The Spanish conquest depended heavily on Indigenous allies, including the Tlaxcalans and other peoples who opposed Mexica imperial power. The Mexica—often called the Aztecs—demanded tribute from subject communities and participated in a regional system of warfare and domination. Their enemies had political interests and grievances of their own.
This complicates the familiar picture of a unified Indigenous population defending its homeland against foreign invaders. There was no single Indigenous political will. Different peoples pursued different goals, and some regarded the Spanish as useful allies against Tenochtitlán.
The speaker is therefore right to reject the assumption that the defeated side must automatically represent the morally superior side.
However, Indigenous alliances do not by themselves justify the entire Spanish conquest or everything that followed. The subsequent colonial order introduced its own forms of coercion, exploitation, and injustice. Recognizing Indigenous agency requires taking Indigenous peoples seriously as historical actors—not treating their alliances as a blank check for Spanish conduct.
3. The philosophical argument: love reality, not an imaginary past
The deepest point is not really about Cortés. It is about the relationship between historical truth and political identity.
The speaker distinguishes between two kinds of patriotism:
Counterfactual patriotism: loving an imagined nation that would have existed if history had unfolded differently.
Historical patriotism: loving the actual nation, formed through events that cannot now be reversed, while judging those events truthfully.
This distinction has considerable merit. A nation cannot build a coherent future by making its identity depend on the fantasy that one part of its history never occurred.
But the distinction needs a qualification: accepting that an event happened is not the same as approving that it happened.
We can recognize the historical reality of the conquest without declaring every aspect of it just. We can acknowledge the destruction of the Mexica Empire without pretending that the empire was innocent. And we can value Mexico's Spanish inheritance without denying the dignity or contributions of Indigenous peoples.
Historical acceptance is not moral absolution.
4. How this relates to the Black Legend
Given the broader debate over Spanish colonial history, this argument offers a useful corrective to the Black Legend—the tradition of portraying Spain as uniquely cruel and its American empire as nothing but exploitation.
The corrective is important when it restores facts that a simplified narrative obscures:
Indigenous peoples were political actors, not merely passive victims.
The Mexica Empire itself exercised imperial power.
The conquest involved Indigenous alliances as well as Spanish military action.
Mexican civilization developed through a complex encounter between Indigenous and European worlds.
Yet a serious historical defense of Spain must also confront documented abuses, coercive labor systems, demographic catastrophe, and disputes within the Spanish world over the treatment of Indigenous peoples. The existence of Spanish critics of conquest-era abuses is itself part of that history.
The goal should not be to replace an anti-Spanish myth with a pro-Spanish myth. It should be to recover the full historical record.
5. My assessment
The speaker's most defensible proposition is this:
Mexico is neither simply the heir of the Aztec Empire nor merely the product of Spanish conquest. It is the historical nation that emerged from the encounter, conflict, and eventual intermixture of multiple peoples and traditions.
The argument is strongest when it rejects selective memory, recognizes the political agency of Indigenous peoples, and insists that patriotism must be grounded in reality.
It is weakest when it implies that anyone who imagines a different historical outcome is necessarily useless to Mexico. Counterfactual history can be intellectually legitimate; the problem arises when an imagined past becomes a substitute for understanding the real one.
A more precise conclusion would be:
We do not honor Mexico by pretending that its history could be erased and rewritten. Nor do we honor it by sanctifying every victor. We honor it by telling the truth about the peoples who made it, the injustices they suffered and inflicted, and the civilization that emerged from their encounter. Only then can historical memory become a foundation for the future rather than a permanent struggle over who deserves our sympathy.
That formulation preserves the speaker's central insight while avoiding the opposite error of treating historical inevitability as moral justification.
I ask all The Catholic Monitor readers to also pray for the end of this war. Watch "Trump Calls Putin To Get Iran War Offramp! w/ Scott Ritter" on YouTube: ...Read more Please Pray for Trump to end the Iran War: Watch "Trump Calls Putin To Get Iran War Offramp! w/ Scott Ritter" on YouTubeFranklin & Graham calls on Christians to pray for 'end to the bloodshed' ahead of Trump-Putin summit...7mo
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Conclave Notes:
-- Open letter urges Pope Leo XIV to correct ‘scandalous incoherence’ in Amoris Laetitia...[Wow! Even notorious Popesplainer Fr.] Harrison warns that Pope Francis taught a ‘dangerous self-contradiction’ on Communion for the divorced and ‘remarried,’ petitioning Pope Leo to correct the record. [https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2025/08/open-letter-urges-pope-leo-xiv-to.html]
-- Are the Cardinals who will participate in the upcoming conclave authentically appointed & morally justified in voting, or will the shadow of Francis's possible illegitimacy cast itself over the next papacy? [https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2025/04/are-cardinals-who-will-participate-in.html]
-- 5 Dubia Questions for 1P5's Steve Skojec & All faithful Catholics especially Francis is definitely Pope Cardinals, Bishops & pundits [https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2019/06/5-dubia-questions-for-steve-skojec.html]
Francis Notes:
l– Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales totally confirmed beyond any doubt the possibility of a heretical pope and what must be done by the Church in such a situation:
“[T]he Pope… WHEN he is EXPLICITLY a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church, and the Church MUST either deprive him, or, as some say, declare him deprived, of his Apostolic See.”
(The Catholic Controversy, by St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306)
Saint Robert Bellarmine, also, said “the Pope heretic is not deposed ipso facto, but must be declared deposed by the Church.”
[https://archive.org/stream/SilveiraImplicationsOfNewMissaeAndHereticPopes/Silveira%20Implications%20of%20New%20Missae%20and%20Heretic%20Popes_djvu.txt]
– “If Francis is a Heretic, What should Canonically happen to him?”: http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2020/12/if-francis-is-heretic-what-should.html
– “Could Francis be a Antipope even though the Majority of Cardinals claim he is Pope?”: http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2019/03/could-francis-be-antipope-even-though.html
– If Francis betrays Benedict XVI & the”Roman Rite Communities” like he betrayed the Chinese Catholics we must respond like St. Athanasius, the Saintly English Bishop Robert Grosseteste & “Eminent Canonists and Theologians” by “Resist[ing]” him: https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/12/if-francis-betrays-benedict-xvi.html
– LifeSiteNews, “Confusion explodes as Pope Francis throws magisterial weight behind communion for adulterers,” December 4, 2017:
The AAS guidelines explicitly allows “sexually active adulterous couples facing ‘complex circumstances’ to ‘access the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.'”
– On February 2018, in Rorate Caeli, Catholic theologian Dr. John Lamont:
“The AAS statement… establishes that Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia has affirmed propositions that are heretical in the strict sense.”
– On December 2, 2017, Bishop Rene Gracida:
“Francis’ heterodoxy is now official. He has published his letter to the Argentina bishops in Acta Apostlica Series making those letters magisterial documents.”
Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church by the bishops by the grace of God.
Election Notes:
– Intel Cryptanalyst-Mathematician on Biden Steal: “212Million Registered Voters & 66.2% Voting,140.344 M Voted…Trump got 74 M, that leaves only 66.344 M for Biden” [http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/intel-cryptanalyst-mathematician-on.html?m=1]
– Will US be Venezuela?: Ex-CIA Official told Epoch Times “Chávez started to Focus on [Smartmatic] Voting Machines to Ensure Victory as early as 2003”: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/will-us-be-venezuela-ex-cia-official.html
– Tucker Carlson’s Conservatism Inc. Biden Steal Betrayal is explained by “One of the Greatest Columns ever Written” according to Rush: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/tucker-carlsons-conservatism-inc-biden.html?m=1
– A Hour which will Live in Infamy: 10:01pm November 3, 2020:
http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/01/a-hour-which-will-live-in-infamy-1001pm.html?m=1
What is needed right now to save America from those who would destroy our God given rights is to pray at home or in church and if called to even go to outdoor prayer rallies in every town and city across the United States for God to pour out His grace on our country to save us from those who would use a Reichstag Fire-like incident to destroy our civil liberties. [Is the [J6] DC Capitol Incident Comparable to the Nazi Reichstag Fire Incident where the German People Lost their Civil Liberties?: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/is-dc-capital-incident-comparable-to.html?m=1 and Epoch Times Show Crossroads on Capitol Incident: “Anitfa ‘Agent Provocateurs‘”:
http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/epoch-times-show-crossroads-on-capital.html?m=1]
Pray an Our Father now for the grace to know God’s Will and to do it.
Pray an Our Father now for America.
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