Matthew Restall's "When Montezuma Met Cortés," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: When Montezuma Met Cortés: The True Story of the Meeting that Changed History by Matthew Restall.

The entry begins:

It would seem simple to cast three central characters in the epic tale of the Spanish invasion of the Aztec Empire: Benicio del Toro playing Hernando Cortés as a ruggedly handsome, fascinatingly flawed hero; one of the current Latina rising stars, like Ana de la Reguera (already a telenovela star in the Spanish-speaking world) to play Malinche, Cortés’s native interpreter and lover; and a Native American actor like Zahn McClarnon or Raoul Max Trujillo to play a brooding, doomed Emperor Montezuma.

But it is not that simple. Such a casting reflects the racist romanticism of the traditional narrative, in which Montezuma surrenders his empire and Malinche her heart to an irresistible Cortés—a metaphor for the providential inevitability of Spanish triumph. Such a movie might have worked in the mid-20th century, but today it would seem absurdly and offensively outdated. The reality of the co-called Conquest of Mexico was...[read on]

Learn more about When Montezuma Met Cortés at the publisher's website.

The Page 99 Test: When Montezuma Met Cortés.

My Book, The Movie: When Montezuma Met Cortés.

--Marshal Zeringue