The Many Names of 1492

The many names of 1492

Author Steve Stern talks about many topics in his prologue, among them mentioning the black legend, reasons for conquistadors to go on their conquests, the problems that Cortés, Pizarro, Almagro and other conquistadors hit and so on. One topic I found interesting were the different ways Stern described the year 1492.

On page XLVI, he describes 1492 as both a drama and a struggle, full of a myriad of problems: “The drama unleashed in 1492 was precisely the drama of a struggle that merged politics and culture: problems of power of legitimation, exploitation…” The coming of the conquistadors was a drama in the sense of the devastation that the native populations incurred, and a struggle between two vastly different nations in terms of how they run their governments, religion and even daily cultural elements.

1492 was a fantasy, an opening to so many different wishes and aspirations imagined in this year of the first voyage. On pages XXVII and XXVIII Stern talks about how the new world was seen as utopias to the Spanish. One was a lust for gold and other treasures and the other a utopia of the soul – the utopia of Christian conversion.

1492 also represents the beginning of the end of purely indigenous American cultures and the end of their empires. While civil wars and infighting were already starting to bring down the Aztec and Inca Empires, it was the coming of the Spaniards that truly ripped them apart and changed the descendancy of the Americas forever. With the coming of the Spanish they brought genes from their own country as well as other European and African American blood to create, over a few generations, a whole new American culture.