The Blanton: Borderlines of the Conquest of Mexico

2021 marks the 500th anniversary of the fall of the Aztec capital of Mexico-Tenochtitlan to an army of both Spanish and indigenous allies. This panel assesses the effects of such a cataclysmic event by focusing on murals produced in Yucatan and maps that depict the north of Mexico and what is now the southwestern United States. The creation of both murals and maps challenge narratives of a “spiritual conquest” and the “hispanization” process, and provide insights into how maps that represented the expansion of the Spanish empire also allowed imaginings of the original homelands of the ancient Mexica.