Respuestas
:The Conquest of America, by Tzvetan Todorov, is an interesting contribution to the analysis of the history of the so-called "meeting of two worlds". However, the lines of analysis that the author follows in this work are more than historiographic and are located in the field of philosophy, and more specifically in that of anthropology, from where he takes up the classic concerns about the Other. These lines of analysis are: the discovery of the Self is possible only through the discovery of the Other, which is only an abstraction constructed by the Self; another establishes: the past announces the present, and as part of the search for the current I, the study of the We in the past is important.
From these lines, Todorov intends to demonstrate in this work the following: 1) that the conquest of America predicts and establishes our present identity and our new relationship with the Other, and 2) that the triumph of the Conquest was due, first , to the "art of adaptation and improvisation" of the conquerors; second, to its superiority in the communication of signs, and third, to the fact that in the multiple combinations of the love-conquest-knowledge triad (about the Other) there was the firm conviction of European superiority and, consequently, that the natives had to be assimilated.
In summary, the parts of this work are: "The discovery of America", where the author tells us about the motivations of the interoceanic enterprise of Colón and its relationship with the Other; "The Conquest", where he discusses the possible reasons for the European victory, and also about the type of relationship that the conquerors established with the natives, and finally "The Epilogue", where the Bulgarian linguist, philosopher and historian discerns about the teachings of the discovery-conquest process as a whole.
Tzvetan Todorov currently resides in France, where he directs the Center for Research on Arts and Language, at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). His abundant work includes Fragile Happiness, We and the Others, Benjamin Constant, The Imperfect Garden, and The Spirit of the Enlightenment. This review is presented here with the purpose of highlighting the importance of this author in the field of social sciences, in which he was awarded the Prince of Asturias Award in 2008 for representing "the spirit of the unity of Europe, the East and the of the West, and the commitment to the ideals of freedom, equality, integration and justice ". The work reviewed and discussed here was first published in French, in Paris, in 1982; in Spanish, it was published in Mexico by Siglo XXI in 1987. In this language, La Conquista de América. The Problem of the Other is in its thirteenth edition.