The compelling PBS documentary “When Worlds Collide” (out on DVD) investigates an important history that has been little understood: what exactly happened in the New World in the first century after Columbus sighted land? Narrator and co-writer Ruben Martinez journeys up and down Latin America, across the Atlantic to Spain and home to the U.S, in search of answers. “When Worlds Collide” has little to say about the Native Americans of the U.S. but focuses on the Spanish Conquistadores and the indigenous people of Mexico and points south. The Spaniards conquered the land and its inhabitant but were unable to transplant their culture without the occurrence of many mutations.
The key word is mestizo, Spanish for the people of mixed ancestry in their New World empire. Mestizo cultures flourished across Latin America, blending elements of Spain with the sophisticated civilizations that had existed prior to the Spanish conquest. The Conquistadores were sexually voracious; moreover, Spanish officers were urged to marry women of the native nobility to bind the colonies to the homeland. Even Roman Catholicism took on a native hue. As Martinez points out, the Virgin of Guadeloupe bores striking resemblance to a local goddess. Whatever her heritage, the Virgin’s apparition before a native, Juan Diego, seemed to seal the bond between the indigenous folk of Mexico and their new faith.
None of the positive aspects of mestizo culture came easily. The Spanish Inquisition tortured and killed, yet the Catholic priesthood numbered many who defended the human dignity of the native peoples. Millions died from exposure to European diseases for which they had no immunity, and millions more were worked to death to exploit the continent’s reserves of gold and silver—the source of Spanish power and a vital facet in the birth of capitalism. The sexual violence against native women was horrendous, and yet out of the collision of worlds came the cultural roots of many millions of Latinos. Given the changing complexion of the U.S., it’s a history all of us should understand.
