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The Historian's Table
Act III: Just Human
00:36:44
Contextualizing mutinies, massacres, and family ties.
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- [00:01]
Charles Fournier
Welcome to the historians table. This is season one, the first Asians in the Americas. Act three Just Human.
- [00:19]
Narrator
The city makes no sound as it burns. At least no one who was there spoke of it. From atop the walls, soldiers and citizens watch Manila's Chinatown, the capital's wealthiest and most populated district, burn to the ground. Thousands of people blow away with the wind. They were a society of farmers, merchants, artists. Now 20,000 Chinese are ash, silent as charred stone. The watchers on the walls have no ears for the lone cannon firing into the masses, for the priest with hundreds of bullets picking off stragglers in the river, for the flames below. The wailing of thousands about to meet innumerable cruel ends. They do not hear it, not in the gloaming humidity, even as their blades pass through flesh and they call upon God for victory. They do not hear the harquebuses barking, even as their trigger fingers crack and blister. Or maybe the sound is too haunting to remember. Maybe as the Chinese fall, they cease to be monoliths, cease to be avaricious, treasonous deviants to their killers. As they scream, they become all too human once more. Once it is done, the sickening memory of the massacre stains even the most zealous Spaniard. A once cackling, sword swinging fanatic becomes a hollow eyed shell, unable to atone for the enormity of the destruction he helped create, even if he felt it necessary. In the after, there is only silence.
- [02:10]
Charles Fournier
If we are being honest, there are no heroes in history. There are heroic moments, absolutely. But heroes, as we think of them, are too perfect. They're impossible. This is okay. When there are no heroes in history. We don't glorify humans beyond reality, but instead we accept the complexities of human beings. This also means that we can reframe how we think of the present and relax the impossible expectations we have of ourselves. Welcome to the first Asians in the Americas. I'm your host, Charles Fournier. In Act 3, we complicate the idea of heroes and work to view the past and present with more empathy. This is act three, Just human.
- [03:09]
Julian Sapariti
It's a casual conversation. We don't have any expectation for what appears.
- [03:15]
William Luis
It's like writing an essay, right? No expectations.
- [03:20]
Charles Fournier
Diego and Julian took a trip to Nashville to have a conversation with Diego's dad.
- [03:25]
William Luis
We touched upon the Chinese side of my father. But on my mother's side, my grandfather was the result of the master having a relationship with his enslaved.
- [03:40]
Charles Fournier
This is Diego's father, William Luis.
- [03:43]
William Luis
And so, out of that relationship, my grandfather was born. And so he was a mixture of the Canary Islander, because there were a lot of Canary Islanders, they were the black enslaved in Cuba. And he went ahead and became a blacksmith.
- [04:00]
Charles Fournier
During this conversation, William talked about his background and the path he took to become a professor at Vanderbilt University.
- [04:08]
William Luis
During the war of independence, 1895-1898, he fought in the war and he made cannons. And so he participated in that war. And because of his. Of the darkness of his skin, he was considered to be a mambi, a freedom fighter. So I look at that side of the family that I met some of them, and they were all dark skinned, they were black. But then when he married my grandmother, she was mixed. And so in the family, we had from the very darkest member to also the whitest. And My grandmother had 10 children. And so we grew up seeing this rainbow in the family, racially speaking.
- [04:55]
Charles Fournier
So for the sake of this podcast, this effort to take an honest look at history, this conversation with Diego's father is important because being honest about history includes our own history. Both Julian and I urged Diego to have this conversation with his father. And this was a conversation that Diego was nervous to have. Not because he doesn't get along with his father. It's actually the opposite. Diego looks up to him. He doesn't want to disappoint him. And to understand why this might be, a look at William's story can help, which begins with his own father. Diego's grandfather.
- [05:37]
William Luis
My father went to Cuba from the town of In Taishan Luangjou. But we found out that not only my father, my grandfather, and my great grandfather made the journey from China to Cuba, which puts the journey back in the 1870s or so. So what my mother told me about my father, he went to Cuba, he worked as a fruit vendor in Cuba and also had a job in a restaurant. And then he migrated to the United States. And so when he had met my mother and when he left, they stayed in touch. And then he asked my mother to travel to the States to marry him. And so my godmother and others accompanied my mother to New York. And so they were married there. My brother and I were born in New York City.
- [06:31]
Charles Fournier
Diego's grandparents, his grandfather, originally from China, and his grandma from Cuba, arrived in New York City in 1946, and William's brother was born a year later. William explained that though it was the 1940s in the United States, he didn't see that his parents had any trouble being an interracial couple.
- [06:50]
William Luis
I think that that was probably the environment and that's the environment that I was born in, is seeing, you know, my parents from different races as well as some friends of different races as well.
- [07:03]
Charles Fournier
This could be because according to William, the Lower east side at the time was one of the most integrated parts of New York City. So what this meant for William was that he was friends with everyone from all sorts of backgrounds.
- [07:17]
William Luis
And the interesting thing about all of this is that when I was with one particular group, they only recognized me for that part of my identity and did not really talk about or consider my other identity. So when I was with my Chinese friends, they only wanted to see the Chinese side. When I was with my African American friends, they just wanted to see the blackness of my skin. And the same thing with the Puerto Rican French, because I spoke Spanish and the Jewish French, because I was in honor classes and I did all these other things. So even though I was in a very integrated place, there was still some separation. I was able to cross boundaries.
- [07:55]
Julian Sapariti
A lot of what we call code.
- [07:56]
William Luis
Switching, code switching, and cross boundaries, because the neighborhoods were really countries onto their own, with their own culture, with their own language and so on and so forth.
- [08:07]
Charles Fournier
William's ability to code switch and traverse these different groups in his neighborhood eventually plays into his future in academics, which wasn't a path he was expecting to.
- [08:16]
William Luis
Take growing up in the Lower east side and not really coming from really good schools, because the education that we had was pretty bad.
- [08:26]
Charles Fournier
And his family set their sights on what they knew. So William learned through what was around him.
- [08:36]
William Luis
Having Chinese father and a Cuban mother. And my father died when I was 10. And so my mother was a single mom, and she tried to help us as much as she could, but she never really learned to speak English, so it was always Spanish. And so we had no real. The culture I learned in the streets and so. Which wasn't necessarily a positive role model, but that's the only one that we had. I never foresaw having a future in academia. And the best for me was, oh, my uncle who lived across the street from us, always thought that the best job that we could aspire to would be bank tellers or secretaries. And those were the aspirations that at least my aunt and uncle grew up with. My mother was a little bit more idealistic, and she kind of put some ideas in our head, but she had no idea what the holds structure was about.
- [09:29]
Charles Fournier
This is where William's ability to be friends with everyone helps. He ends up in several leadership positions in school.
- [09:36]
William Luis
Well, the good thing is, having gone to a high School that was in the Lower east side and fully integrated. One of the things that I did that may have explained why I was able to go to college is that I was involved in leadership positions. So I was junior class president and then I was president of the school.
- [09:58]
Charles Fournier
So these leadership roles and taking advanced courses led to a college counselor helping William get into college. And during his education, William's identity became a focal point.
- [10:09]
William Luis
I went to school at Binghamton, which at that time it was called Harper College, and it was Rockefeller's baby. That's where he put in a lot of money and we got a lot of really good professors. The question is, why was I there and I shouldn't have been. We were the second group of students from the inner city who brought some kind of color to Harper because It was like 99% white. And when we got there, it was like a white sheet of paper with a little black dot. And so because we came from New York, we had an intimate relationship. Hispanics and. And Latinos and African Americans, we all mixed together. And so we seeked each other out and we created this organization called the Afro Latin Alliance.
- [11:00]
Charles Fournier
But this group led to fissures.
- [11:02]
William Luis
The interesting thing about the Afro Latin alliance is that we came together, but then the following year there was a split. And the split was orchestrated by the administration because we had come together and they talking to some of the students that they could get more if they separated. And it was a clear strategy to divide us.
- [11:23]
Julian Sapariti
The split between the Afro and the Latin.
- [11:25]
William Luis
And the Latin, yeah.
- [11:26]
Charles Fournier
Even with the split, William was a leader across the groups. This has been a theme for William. He is a leader. Following his bachelor's degree, William continued with his education. He went to Wisconsin Madison for graduate school. About this time is when William met a young woman whose parents were both professors. This exposed him to the possibility of having a life in academics.
- [11:48]
William Luis
So I was doing my master's, she was finishing college, and we started dating. And during the summer, she would invite me to her home and the family would invite me. And I got exposed to books. They were books and magazines and really interesting conversations. And I got involved in that kind of activity. And she had been offered admission in grad school in Princeton, and then she went to Stanford. And I was working in New York and I thought, huh, maybe it'd be a good idea if I should just continue my education just to keep up with her. Not necessarily, because, I mean, I found the whole thing exciting. But there was no real direction. And so I wound up applying to Cornell.
- [12:34]
Charles Fournier
During that first semester at Cornell, William broke up with this young woman. And this sent him into a sort of existential dilemma. His main reason for going to school was because of this girl. And now that relationship was over. So William sought advice from his advisor.
- [12:54]
William Luis
And so I went to his office, and I explained to him in great detail, because I wanted him to understand my struggle. And he looked at me, he said in Spanish, dejate recommend mi da y ponta trabajad. Literally, stop eating shit and get to work. And so at that time, I realized, okay, this is something I'm doing for me. I'm not doing it for her. And it was a turning point in my life because I began to take seriously everything that was going around me. So I divided my life into two parts. Before graduate school and after graduate school, because before, I was basically just not knowing what I wanted to do. And then after graduate school, I was exposed to all the stuff that was exciting, and I decided, okay, I'm going to take this very seriously.
- [13:47]
Charles Fournier
And he did. William earned an MA and PhD from Cornell University. He became a professor, and he was eventually hired at Vanderbilt University, where he's been a professor for over 30 years. Okay, so why does this matter? For us to understand Diego and to get a glimpse into why Diego might have the perspective that he does about life and history, it's important to consider a person who has had a huge impact on Diego's life. A person that Diego looks up to and followed the path of, even if Diego didn't mean to.
- [14:19]
Julian Sapariti
Well, you know, originally, I didn't want to be a professor or anything like that. I didn't want to write the kind of stuff that you were writing. I wanted to do creative writing. I wanted to write stories and poems and nonfiction and plays and screenwriting and all that stuff. And then somehow, I guess, trying so hard not to be a professor, I somehow ended up becoming one.
- [14:48]
William Luis
I remember distinctly that Diego would say to me, I don't want to be like you. You work too hard. You work too hard. I'm not gonna be like you. And then what happens? A number of years later, Diego is working hard. I mean, you know, he knows how to balance better his life than I do.
- [15:08]
Julian Sapariti
Well, you must have really been out of balance, because I've seen Diego working the last few years, and it is not in balance at all. Well, that's probably true.
- [15:18]
Charles Fournier
I really appreciate this irony. Diego worked hard not to be like his father, but he is now a professor that, according to Julian, might be working too hard in regards to his mental health and overall quality of life, which is something very typical of young academics. And this is what I want to highlight. Part of why Diego didn't initially want to record this conversation was because of how personal it would be. I get it. But that personal quality is important. Part of Diego's identity as a professor includes a desire to be perfect. He wants, like his dad, to be a leader in his field. And he has a sense that perfection is what is needed. This is the challenge of honest history. If we take a look at history through a lens of honesty, we will not find perfection. Even those that are glorified as heroes are just humans who had exceptional moments that happened to be recorded and, more often than not, embellished. This conversation humanizes Diego's father, this man that Diego looks up to. And even if he doesn't admit it, it pushes against the standard Diego has created for himself because of his desire to make his dad proud. And the reality is, when you get rid of this concept of heroism or perfection, you might find authentic human relationships that are complicated.
- [16:43]
Diego Javier Luis
What do you think of his work?
- [16:45]
William Luis
Diego? I think. Come on, D, don't give me. I think he's brilliant. As a matter of fact, I say to people, not only because of his scholarship but also his lifestyle. I'm fond of saying that when I grow up, I want to be like Diego.
- [17:14]
Charles Fournier
The challenge of looking at history honestly is that it requires empathy. It requires a holistic look at a person or situation or moment. And this is difficult. Try taking an honest look at your own sense of identity, your goals, your assumptions. They come from a very specific, biased perspective. Sometimes that perspective doesn't allow us to see the bad or the good. Like the pride of a father for a son, this subjectivity also leads to drastic reactions about who the heroes or villains of history may be. This, too, can be difficult. As Diego would say, it's complicated. But I want to be clear. Taking an honest look at history is more than simply convicted. Condemning something as bad and just stopping there. That isn't history. That's creating a rhetorically charged narrative. By digging into atrocities and genocides, we get an opportunity to learn something authentic about humanity and why people do what they do. It's more of an effort to contextualize why certain events may have occurred. And to be clear, context isn't justification. It's a pursuit of truth, even if that truth is uncomfortable. And before we transition into the past with Diego and Julian, to look at the 1603 massacre, one of the most vicious and violent moments in early modern colonial History that most folks probably have never heard of. I want to draw attention to a common thread from that massacre that we will see today, A thread that makes looking at this history valuable. The heart of the 1603 massacre is tied to Spanish anxiety about large numbers of Chinese living in Manila. This anti Asian imperial anxiety led to violence. And this isn't the last time in history that an empire's anti Asian anxiety led to anti Asian rhetoric, which escalated to anti Asian violence. So looking at the history of anti Asian hate may be useful when combating modern versions of the same hate. Just think of the anti Asian violence that happened in response to the COVID 19 pandemic. This isn't new, the hate, nor the fact that it's connected to empire. So let's return to Manila to where the galleons would leave for the Americas. In order to understand and provide context for, not justify the Spanish's massacring of 20,000 Chinese in Manila, we need to look at the circumstances that led to this attempted genocide by this anxious empire. Let's start with why the Spanish empire was in Manila and why living alongside the Chinese made them anxious.
- [20:05]
Julian Sapariti
Basically, Chinese were both essential neighbors in that they provided a lot of the food for the colony. The merchants were basically the reason why the colony existed in the first place, because they were trading silks and porcelain for Spanish silver. So the profitability of that trade was the reason why the Spaniards were in the Philippines in the first place. But as more Chinese arrive in Manila and they start living there in larger numbers, the Spaniards realized that, oh wow, there's actually some fundamental cultural differences between Hispanics, colonial society and the cultural customs of Chinese people that in Spanish eyes, made their coexistence in the colony totally untenable.
- [20:47]
Charles Fournier
The feeling that coexistence wasn't possible contributes to the anxieties of the Spanish because population wise, they were the minority in Manila.
- [20:56]
Julian Sapariti
Manila is an interesting case because it was actually majority Chinese population that lived there.
- [21:01]
Charles Fournier
So this impacts the power dynamic of a place the Spanish empire believes they control.
- [21:06]
Julian Sapariti
In the large urban areas, you can really see that influence. But outside of that, it's like the Wild West. You know, everyone's going in a different direction. Everyone is fighting for reasons that you wouldn't expect them to fight for. You have a lot of Spaniards being rebellious, acting against the Crown. You have runaway slave communities. You have indigenous people living outside of the colonial purview. It's chaos.
- [21:32]
Charles Fournier
Let's pause for a quick conceptualization of the layering happening in Manila at this moment. So you have the Philippines, an archipelagic country to the southeast of China. And Manila is a prominent port in the Philippines. It happens to be the Spanish empire's capital of their Asian colonies. And Manila is inhabited by indigenous Filipinos. But the largest population in Manila is Chinese, which leads to Spanish anxieties about their influences in a place that is supposed to serve as a capital. And what do empires do when they feel anxious?
- [22:11]
Julian Sapariti
So let's set the scene I'm talking about. It happens in 1593. There's a larger population of Chinese people in Spanish Manila than there had ever been. The city is beginning to consolidate into several distinct districts that are meant to divide people by ethnic group. You have the inner Spanish city. You have a Japanese district called Dilau. You have a Chinese district called the Parian. You have indigenous people that often live across the river, so away from kind of the main district of the city. And tensions are rising because Spaniards think of Chinese people as being oppositional to Spanish culture and religion.
- [22:54]
Charles Fournier
The main reason for this assumed opposition is the reality that many of the Chinese people had no interest in converting to Catholicism. They were not fitting into colonial society the way that the Spanish hoped they would. They were not fitting into the Spanish expectations for masculinity. And even worse was that the Chinese seemed to have an equal or greater influence on the indigenous population. Keep this in mind.
- [23:18]
Julian Sapariti
So you get to 1593. There's a governor in charge named Gomez Perez das Marinas who wants to launch an expedition to reclaim the Spice Islands. Again, you know, this is one of the main goals for the Spanish presence in Asia. They want to take control of the Spice Islands, to have direct access to those products to enter American markets.
- [23:39]
Charles Fournier
So the governor gathers together a crew to make this voyage.
- [23:42]
Julian Sapariti
So he ends up conscripting 200 Chinese to man the galleys to sail there against the wishes of his advisors, Taro, on his flagship. And he's promised that he's not going to mistreat them. He's going to compensate them properly. And all of this, all the while, kind of in the backdrop of all these fears against Chinese people and how they could potentially rebel, or just what they represent against the Spanish regime.
- [24:09]
Charles Fournier
To top this all off, these new crew members conscripted by the governor are not experienced sailors.
- [24:16]
Julian Sapariti
So they set out. They end up hitting contrary winds. There's problems with the navigation. Anyway, they end up in a standstill for several days. And so at wit's end, the governor threatens that he's going to whip the Chinese crew members, and he's going to cut their hair. So the hair cutting bit is like the last straw. Because hair is kind of sacred in Chinese culture. It's considered an inheritance from one's parents, from one's ancestors. And hair cutting was, for the Spaniards, the distinction between a kind of Asian femininity kind of wrapped up into these stereotypes of sodomy and same sex relationships and Hispanic masculinity.
- [25:03]
Charles Fournier
The hair could represent a visual distinction between assimilation and non assimilation. If a Chinese man assimilated and converted to Catholicism, he might cut his hair as a mark of passing into Hispanic society. The men on the crew have not assimilated, so they have long hair. And the governor threatens to cut their hair, which is a threat to cut off their ancestral inheritance.
- [25:25]
Julian Sapariti
So that night, Spaniards and their Filipino crews as well had stayed up late gambling. And they're kind of sleeping in their hammocks, they're mostly naked and they've been drinking, so, you know, they just passed out. And it's during this moment that the Chinese decide that they're going to take control of the ship. And so they all wear white clothing so they can see each other in the night. And they have candles and they gather the weapons that were available, which are Japanese katanas or longswords, curved longswords, which are very, very sharp. And they kind of position themselves next to each, next to a Spaniard or a Filipino. And when the signal is given, they cut their throats. It's a brutal mutiny. They call for the governor, like, help, help. There's something going on up here. And so the governor is like, oh, what's going on? He lifts his head out and then they skewer him on their weapons and that's how he dies.
- [26:31]
Charles Fournier
This Chinese mutiny leads to the death of the Spanish governor of the Philippines. This is a big deal.
- [26:38]
Julian Sapariti
And according to one of the chroniclers who writes about this, and he says that he gets the information from two Spanish survivors of the mutiny, but it's embellished in many interesting ways. Anyway, the point is, he says that because these sailors are inexperienced and now there's no Spaniards or Filipinos left who know how to actually operate the ship, they run into a lot of trouble trying to get back to China. And during this period of trouble where they're trying to navigate through the Philippine Islands, they begin to turn to spiritual possession for help. They invite ancestors into their bodies that will give them the wisdom and the skills to be able to sail back to China. And it's during this that again, according to the Spanish Survivors that one of them. The advice he gets from an ancestor is that he needs to tie up one of the Filipino survivors on the main mast and sacrifice him. So this guy, according to the Spaniards, ties up this Filipino and he disembowels him. Not only does he do that, but he actually eats some of the entrails and then casts him overboard. And it's at that moment that they leave the two Spaniards behind and then continue their journey to China, where they're then blown off course again down the coast to Southeast Asia.
- [27:58]
Charles Fournier
This story is gnarly, but that might have been the point for the Spanish chronicler who told the story of this mutiny. Part of exploring history in search of honesty is acknowledging that details may have been skewed to benefit the group telling the story. For the Spanish empire. The brutality of the story, more than just the mutiny itself, led to the justification of violent retaliation against all of the Chinese in Manila, not just the mutineers who actually sailed to China and were executed by the Chinese for their mutiny. The Chinese recognized the diplomatic danger this mutiny put them in, so they punished the group responsible for the mutiny. But does this appease the Spanish? No. The son of the governor that was skewered in the mutiny became governor himself. And he became governor with a desire for revenge.
- [28:55]
Julian Sapariti
He's the first to propose a mass deportation of Chinese from the Philippines as a response to their fundamental incompatibility with colonial society. And it's kind of those steps that lead us to this kind of trigger point in 1603, where a group of rebels rises up against increasing, increasingly harsh Spanish laws to punish the Chinese community in Manila. And that's when you get these massacres in response to that uprising.
- [29:24]
Charles Fournier
The escalation to a genocidal event partially stems from this imperial anxiety from the Spaniards that another group might have more influence in this colonial territory. But another aspect of this is the desire by the son of the murdered governor named Luis Perez Das Maria to punish an entire population for the murder of his father. Being angry over his father's murder is understandable, but the massacre of 20,000 human beings and the forced deportation of an entire population is a wild overreaction. And this overreaction does not end well for Luis when the Chinese fight back.
- [30:01]
Julian Sapariti
When the uprising in 1603 happens, he's one of the first to go out in defense of the city. And he goes with, like all the most experienced Spanish veterans to defend this one church that's across the river from the city proper. And they succeed in defending the church, the Governor orders them to stay in place, but he says, no, we're going to go after the Chinese. We're going to pursue them into the countryside and we're going to destroy them there. And when his soldiers don't want to follow his command, he says, what chicken has sung to your ear? With 25 men, we can conquer all of China. He says that. And then he goes after them. And his soldiers, they're loyal, they follow him, but he ends up leading them down this path that's very narrow in this cane field. They can't really see what's around them. The Chinese have organized an ambush in a half moon crescent, waiting for this file to come into the trap. And they spring to Trav and they massacre the Spanish soldiers. And according to one of the chroniclers, they come upon the former governor, the son of the killed governor. At this point, they come upon him most intensely, as you can imagine, they hate him too. And they break his knees and he's fighting for a while from his knees, and then they bash his head in. But they fight him, they kill him very slowly, you know, like piece by piece. And there's only a couple survivors of that that run back and the Chinese decapitate them and they send the heads back to the city. Yeah. I mean, it's a brutal conflict.
- [31:41]
Charles Fournier
This series of events, as Diego says, is a brutal moment in history. And it can be hard to view the whole situation objectively. This is why having someone like Julian, who listened attentively to this whole series of events is important to help with having some perspective.
- [31:58]
Julian Sapariti
You went way too fast by the fact like that. Of course. What would happen if you saw, like, if someone stabbed your dad through the head?
- [32:05]
Diego Javier Luis
You'd be like, well, let's look at the context of which this guy, right, the historical context.
- [32:10]
Julian Sapariti
Oh, yeah, certainly he had a reason to be pissed off.
- [32:12]
Diego Javier Luis
Yeah.
- [32:13]
Julian Sapariti
But he took it too far, you know? Yeah. Like the quest for revenge destroyed him in the end. He disobeyed the governor's orders and followed, tried to pursue them and wipe them all out then and there.
- [32:25]
Charles Fournier
This was also a moment when Julian pointed out that it's tough to identify heroism.
- [32:30]
Diego Javier Luis
The idea of heroism, you know, you have to do some gymnastics to get to the capital H. Hero. I do still think there's like valor. Right. Even in the most brutal circumstances. Again, it's the context. And there are winners and losers in these things. I think shows the brutality of empire and the messiness of empire. This is what happens when you get into dealing with people. You subjugate to help colonize indigenous people. It's not going to end well. There's going to be uprisings, and you may put them down, but that in itself is a Voldemort level soul splitting.
- [33:16]
Julian Sapariti
Well, because they massacre everybody. Certainly in the aftermath of 1603, it's like, what the fuck do we do now? But I still. I think that there's a kind of. There's a kind of irony to the son's end, you know, the cockiness. He's kind of on the wings of Cortez's legacy, you know, like the idea that just a few Spaniards can wipe out these entire civilizations.
- [33:41]
Diego Javier Luis
Right.
- [33:42]
Julian Sapariti
And he meets the harsh reality that those were only ever just legends and.
- [33:47]
Diego Javier Luis
Legends that we were taught.
- [33:49]
Julian Sapariti
Yeah, legends.
- [33:50]
Diego Javier Luis
I bet when both his knees were broken, he was like, oh, Cortez might have lied.
- [33:56]
Charles Fournier
The legend of Cortez was that he and his small group of soldiers toppled the Aztec Empire. Cortez was considered a hero by the Spanish, something to live up to. The reality is that Cortez had the help of about 200,000 warriors from the surrounding area. But that detail wouldn't make him as heroic. Still, this story of Cortes glory gave the son a false sense of what is possible. The stories of heroes too often remove important details, and that criticism includes tales about rebels who get storied into heroes with absolutely no flaws to be found. An honest look at history requires an inclusive look at history, an effort to see the imperfections and context that makes people human. Gathering more context gets us a little closer to the truth, to an honest view of history.
- [34:56]
Diego Javier Luis
I think that's. That's what you're trying to do, Diego. I'm going to go as deep as possible into this history, and I'm not going to stop at just like I found the political utility, I snatched out this one hero or I snatched out this one villain. And I can prove my point that, you know, Asians belong here. I think that is your point. I think that's my point. Because we're not assholes. We think everyone belongs here. Right? But there's a deeper reckoning that can be found through a method of nuanced, as objective as possible, honest history, that the sweet and short catharsis of a politicized history does not give you.
- [35:35]
Charles Fournier
And this skill and desire to complicate history is transferable. We understand ourselves through our histories. So if we can remove the expectations of perfection, we can complicate how we think about ourselves and our families and the stories that create our identities. Next time in Act 4, we will learn about a South Asian holy woman.
- [35:57]
Julian Sapariti
Thousands of people attend her funeral and in fact take her body and the things that she owned to be holy relics.
- [36:05]
Charles Fournier
I'm Charles Fournier. This episode was written and produced by me. This podcast is based on the book the First Asians in the Americas written by Diego Javier Luis, who also aided in editing and voiceover. Original music from this podcast is from Julian Sapariti. Mixing and mastering was done by Seth Boggess. If you are interested in getting involved in movements to put an end to anti Asian hate and violence, check out stop. AAPIhate.org this podcast is funded by Tufts University. Thanks for listening.