Boletín Americanista (Nov 2015)
Image of the clergy in the cinema of the conquest of Mexico: the Black Legend in the “Nuevo Mundo” of Gabriel Retes
Abstract
The conquest and colonization of the territory now called Mexico has been a recurrent theme in Mexican film and, of course, the central role that the clergy has played in the evangelization of those lands has been present for the entirety of Mexican cinematography. In this historical genre, the representation of the clergy has varied depending upon historiographic tendencies and the important historic, political, and cultural events of the time that the film was made; in this way, we can see representation of the Catholic Church’s power on a spectrum that ranges from goodness to absolute wickedness. Most of the time these representations are based more on historical perceptions than available documentation. This article will analyze the evolution of clerical figures in conquest films, noting different modes of representation dictated by the official historiographical tendency in the moment that the film was made and presented to the public.
