When Worlds Collide

But as a historian, Wood has a great sense of the apt detail--the conquistadors' drinking cactus juice reserved for victims of human sacrifice as they tramped inland toward the Aztec capital; a cabbie who warns Wood that the Mexico City neighborhood where Montezuma and Cortes first met is a bit rough today. In each of his films, there's sure to be a passage that sticks with you. "Conquistadors" airs on public television stations beginning May 9. Beliefnet's Paul O'Donnell talked with Wood about the making of the film.

Of course, this has been a major arguing point among scholars. There's been a huge amount of discussion about whether that story is true, or whether it's a rationalization for the conquest, bending Aztec traditions to make sense of their history on the Spaniards' terms. Is this a real Aztec account by a real eyewitness, or has it been contaminated in the two or three decades after the conquest by European constructions of history and mythology? But it's pretty convincing that there was uncertainty about the nature of these newcomers. Cortes in one of his letters written from Mexico says they took us as returning gods.

In any collision of worlds like this, there is the problem of categorization. You can compare it with the kind of stories dramatized in "Star Trek" or "Close Encounters." What happens when you come into contact with a world you had no idea existed before you met it?

Some of the Conquistadors had probably fought against the Moors. They knew about the existence of ancient Egypt, about ancient Greece and India, even if they hadn't been there. So, astonishing as it was to discover, not just tribes as Columbus did, but civilizations, with law and writing, it was nothing like the shattering blow to their cosmos that the Native Americans must have suffered.

Continued on page 2: »