Is this New Epic About the Spanish Conquest of the Aztecs the next “Shōgun?”
This podcast is making waves on the internet. It's the best story telling of the politics and empire surrounding the clash between Old and New world civilizations I've heard - its worth listening to.
The Emmy Awards, which honor the best television, cable, and streaming content of the year, took place earlier this week, and they were dominated by Shōgun, a historical drama based on a novel of the same name. Set against the real-world clash of European and Japanese civilizations at the turn of the 17th century, the show’s success is a testament to the artistic and technical talent of the writers, cast, and crew, first and foremost, but also to the producers and executives who took a chance on this project that may not have been made just a few years ago.
Conventional wisdom held that it was a risk both for its niche, somewhat academic subject matter, and because much of the dialogue is in Japanese, meaning most viewers must rely on subtitles.
Nevertheless, the show’s first season was a runaway hit with American audiences, proving once and for all that the barriers of language, time, and lack of familiarity with a culture or its history have all but disappeared – if they were ever truly barriers in the first place.
It seems curious that there hasn’t been a sweeping epic made about the civilization-altering event of the new and old worlds coming together. It’s a question I’ve always considered and never had a good answer for especially when the momentous events happened so closely and arguably impact our own American culture as much, or more than anyone else’s. Perhaps the story was almost too big? Nevertheless, it seems a bit ironic, doesn’t it?
Latinos and other bilingual and bi-cultural communities have known and felt this for decades. For us, moving between music, television shows, and films in our parents’ or grandparents’ native languages and the ubiquitous English language American pop-culture content children of all immigrant communities typically prefer is perfectly natural and just part of everyday life. Thanks to smartphones and the cornucopia of apps and streaming services literally in our pockets, it’s never been easier to move between worlds and across time than it is today.
And that got me thinking: how is it that a story like Shōgun – based on a relatively obscure chapter of history unknown to the general American public and whose consequences while relevant seem a world away – made its way into major production and distribution, while other chapters of history that are much more well known, with ramifications that impact millions of Americans and millions more across the western world every day, have yet to receive the Hollywood treatment at anywhere near this scale?
I’m thinking specifically of the chapter of history known to most people as the Spanish Conquest of the Aztecs. August 13th, 2021 – just three years ago! – marked the 500th anniversary of the day of the final defeat of the Aztecs by the Spanish conquistadores and their Tlaxcala allies. It was a literal “Big Bang” moment that blew the doors open to European colonization of the Americas and, perhaps more importantly, set off the long, often painful process of fusing the cultures, politics, and gene pools of three different continents. It is this process that today’s Hispanic people from The Bronx to Buenos Aires and from Seattle to São Paulo inherited and continue to grapple with.
It’s also a chapter in history that’s familiar to many people, but whose details are not well understood. Anyone who’s taken junior high history has at least a basic knowledge of the Aztecs, the Mayans, and the conquistadors, and some of the characters in this story, like the Aztec Emperor Moctezuma and the Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortés, are likely familiar, too, at least by name. Yet the political, personal, and tactical intricacies of the Conquest are little understood outside academic circles. The flaws, traits, contradictions, and conflicts of the characters, too, constitute territory virtually unexplored in mainstream pop culture.
Maybe as Latinos, we’ve been too uncomfortable examining some of the more brutal aspects of our own story. The complex nature of violence, force, power, and subjugation of non-European peoples levied on one another challenges some of our current conceptualization of what conquest and domination mean for our modern narrative. But Apocalypto certainly wasn’t afraid to tackle those themes. Neither was Shogun for that matter. I think we’re ready for that discussion and this podcast takes us there.
All of this should be fertile ground for the kinds of story arcs and plot twists that all great dramas have, not to mention the sheer visuals available to showrunners: The Aztecs’ floating city of Tenochtitlan with its gardens and canals; the many temples and pyramids and other monumental architecture across the Mayan and Aztec worlds; and the site of throngs of native warriors in cotton armor and elaborate feathered uniforms and obsidian-lined clubs doing battle with the Spanish and their steel swords, horses, and primitive cannon and small arms. But besides the largely fictionalized though critically acclaimed 2006 film Apocalypto that I mentioned, which tells a powerful story of love and survival set in the Mayan world and in the Mayan language on the eve of the arrival of the Spanish, Hollywood has completely avoided any major production about this monumental period that seems like it should be a layup for showrunners and streaming services looking for the next big historic epic.
If one writer has his way, however, this all may be about to change. I got to meet Peter Mellado when he moderated a panel I was on for my book “The Latino Century” at the East Los Angeles Book Festival. Peter Mellado has developed a dramatic TV series called Reign of Blood. Mapped out for 5 seasons of one-hour episodes, Reign of Blood opens in 1518, a few months before Cortés embarks from Spanish-colonized Cuba to explore the newly “discovered” land we know today as Mexico. The series concludes a few years later, taking us through that fateful day in 1521.
“It’s the story of the collision of two remarkable civilizations, Spanish and Aztec, with the Mayan civilization also featuring heavily,” Mellado explains. “What’s really interesting to me is how both the Aztecs and the Spanish were each at the height of the respective civilizations, with each representing the ascendant versions of the ancient religious, political, and economic institutions of their respective continents. And so the popular conception of the advanced Spanish civilization overwhelming the primitive Aztecs is not only misleading but wrong. The Aztecs put up quite a fight and almost prevailed. The chance to correct multiple mainstream assumptions embedded in this story is really exciting.”
But for a story to resonate with audiences, there needs to be more than historical context. It needs drama. “Reign of Blood at base level is a very human story about the flawed men and women fated to negotiate this collision – their lofty ambitions, their petty personal rivalries, and their struggles to overcome the limits of their imaginations – all the tasty, classic story motifs that make great TV.” The timing of his project could not be better. In addition to our proximity to the 500th anniversary, today America finds itself at a critical moment where it’s finally reckoning with the contradictions and hypocrisies of its history in ways it hasn’t since the Civil War. Across the Western world, the consequences of conquest, colonialism, and slavery are being reexamined at a heightened pace, and the long-delayed process of reconciling these and other issues that have persisted into our modern age appears to be finally underway.
“Hispanics in particular are the living legacies of these consequences and contradictions,” Mellado says, “and the weight of reconciling these contradictions both in their historical context and in the context of our realities as American citizens will have a profound impact on the future of our country. Seeing the story of our birth, however violent and tragic, could have the same pop-culture impact on America that the show Roots had a generation ago.”
He said “could” because Reign of Blood is currently “in development,” which is Hollywood-speak for projects that haven’t yet been green-lit or otherwise picked up by a studio or big-name actor or director who could get it produced. While he continues the struggle to get this story into production, he’s started a podcast about the Conquest and its significance to create awareness and, hopefully, build some momentum and buzz around this important chapter in history. His vision is for the podcast to serve as a historical reference point for audiences– if and when the TV series gets into production. But the podcast is riveting and stands on its own two feet, something Mellado credits to the subject matter, and the timing. “People are hungry for content that explains their world and helps them better appreciate and understand their place in it,” he says.
“Victor Hugo wrote, ‘There’s nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come,’” he continues, “and now is the moment to empower creative professionals to bring this story to life and present it to audiences around the world. It is without a doubt an idea whose time has come.” While he fights the good fight to get this made, I encourage you to check out his podcast of the same name. “Reign of Blood: The True Story of the Epic Clash Between the Aztec and Spanish Empires,” available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube. Even if you think you know this story, his retelling will open your eyes and illuminate nuances and details that will completely change how you comprehend and process this chapter of history.
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What a great idea to develop the dramatic story of the early civilization of this hemisphere at the arrival of the Europeans. Of course there’s academic work on this but it’s not been part of our popular culture. A film project would make this great historical narrative more accessible to us today. Meanwhile I’ll check out the podcast link.
Thanks, Mike! Sometimes I can use a break from politics and this is a great way to learn more of our shared cultural history
Thanks for this recommendation. Sounds great.