I definitely agree with the premise that the director of “La Otra Conquista” and the author Inga Clendinnen had similar goals and motives in telling the narratives of the Spanish conquest of native peoples in Mexico. The film “Otra Conquista” does not tell the story of the actual conquest of Cortez and the Spanish over the Aztecs in Mexico but it does take place a few years later. The main native character Topiltzin is seen at the beginning of the film at the massacre of the Templo Mayor in 1520. In that scene he is climbing up a pyramid-like structure, struggling and slipping with each step because of a rainstorm to find his dead mother. At the conclusion of the film, Topiltzin or Tomas goes to tremendous lengths to bring the statue of the Virgin Mary into his room at the monastery. At the end before he goes to fetch the statue, he removes his Franciscan monk garb and improvises the cloak cloth into a more native style of dress. Tomas is fascinated by the statue of the Virgin Mary because it resembles the Aztec mother goddess. In the beginning of the film when the Spanish arrive at an Aztec ceremony, the altar of the Aztec mother goddess is destroyed and Tomas’ grandmother is killed. Tomas thought that the Virgin Mary was like the Mother goddess. He even says to the Franciscan friar Fray Diego de la Coruna while at the monastery that there is little difference between the Spanish kind of worship and the Aztec kind of worship. La Coruna does not approve of this radical sentiment but does little to convince him otherwise. Syncretism is quite common when a new religion spreads throughout a foreign land. I think the film may have been suggesting this.
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