The Other Conquest (1998)

The Other Conquest is a film that takes place in Tenochtitlan, following the defeat of the Mexica by Hernando Cortes.  The story centers on the priest, Fray Diego de la Coruna, and the native Topiltzin.  In the film, Fray Diego takes a special interest in the conversion of a certain indigenous scribe, whom he renames as Tomas.  Fray Diego makes Tomas' conversion his own personal mission in life. We see much resistance from Tomas, who is determined to keep his traditional ways alive.

The film begins after a massacre of the great temple.  An indigenous man rises from the dead bodies and sees his mother has been slain.  We are next taken to an underground cave during a human sacrifice performed by Topiltzin's grandmother.  The natives are discovered by the Spanish.  Several are killed, but Topiltzin is captured and sent to Cortes.  Cortes is set to give Topiltzin the death penalty but his mistress Tequichpo pleads for the life of her fellow native, claiming that they are siblings, sharing Moctezuma  as a father.  He is eventually sent to a monastery in the charge of Fray Diego with Tequichpo as a teacher to show Topiltzin the way of the Europeans.  However, Fray Diego discovers Topiltzin and Tequichpo trying to reproduce and Tequichpo is put in prison.  She does become pregnant with Topiltzin's son but hangs herself while in prison.  Topiltzin becomes very ill and begins to hallucinate strange visions of the Virgin Mary and the Mother Goddess.  The Virgin Mary statue arrives at the monastery and Topiltzin becomes increasingly drawn to it.  However, he is denied contact with the statue, as it is locked in the sacristy.  As Topiltzin's condition becomes worse, Fray Diego purposely leaves the door to the sacristy open one night.  Topiltzin escapes his locked room, carries the Virgin Mary up to his window, and commits suicide by falling from his window while holding the statue in his arms.

The Other Conquest is a film that is unlike other films set in this time period.  While most others tend to emphasize either black legend or white legend, this film does neither. It takes on a different perspective.  Neither side is particularly glorified in the film.  The Other Conquest shows the brutality and intolerance with which the Spaniards treated the natives. However, the film keeps from becoming too Black Legend by incorporating the role of the sympathetic Fray Diego. It also avoids depicting the natives as innocent or willingly submissive.  It stays fairly neutral trying to convey the idea of a mutual conquest or reverse conquest rather than a total annihilation of the indigenous populations.  By the end of the film, there is clear evidence that Fray Diego has, at least to some degree, been influenced by Tomas. Tomas' influence on Fray Diego made such a lasting impression that it is Tomas' name that Fray Diego remembers on his death bed.

This movie also goes to disprove the Myth of Native Desolation. The Myth of Native Desolation claims that all the indigenous peoples of the Americas were easily converted and quickly considered themselves a part of the New European Order. This myth also has one to believe that the natives abandoned all their prior beliefs and practices and, therefore, ceased to exist as an ethnicity. The Other Conquest shows that there was much more resistance from the natives. In the film, we see the remnants of the indigenous population secretly gathering in underground caves in order to practice their traditional religious ceremonies without being persecuted.  We also see that Topiltzin is never able to fully accept Christianity. Rather he is able to see the commonalities between his religion and the Spaniards' religion.

It think that that is another theme of the movie: to show that the religious conquest was really unnecessary because both of the religions were too similar.  Both religions place an emphasis on a mother figure.  In Catholicism it is the Virgin Mary; in the Mexica religion it is the Mother Goddess.  Tomas, therefore, takes an immediate interest in the Virgin Mary.  Tomas is able to see these similarities of his religion and Fray Diego's religion.  At one point in the film, a Catholic mentions to Tomas how brutal his old religion is for sacrificing humans to appease their gods.  To this, Tomas retorts that, "you eat yours," referring to the Catholic belief of transubstantiation during communion, showing that both religions can seem strange to those who don't understand them.

The Other Conquest is a good historical film.  I depicts a much more realistic view of what probably occurred between the two very different groups during the period of conquest.  In The Other Conquest, we see not only the European  influence the Spaniards forced on natives, but also that the natives were able to influence some of the Spaniards as well.