No matter what interpretation we use of the Spanish conquest (caused by Indigenous demographic collapse, or caused by Indigenous participation/collaboration or civil wars), the alleged outcome makes no sense. It was simply impossible for a handful of Europeans to move across an entire continent to swiftly establish a global absolutist monarchy built on the enslaving of millions of Indigenous peoples for nearly 400 years. This is a fairy tale. Excess force and violence do not empires make: witness the 20-year US adventure in Afghanistan. Jorge Díaz Ceballos comes closer to offering a satisfying account of one of the structural foundations of the resilient, polycentric, multicultural empire that was the Spanish monarchy in the New World.
For Díaz Ceballos, the city, as ideology and political practice, holds the key to understanding the many mysteries of early Spanish conquest and colonization. Cities were not buildings but social relations that justified authority and...
