Fake News : Week of 9.27

The other day in class we had a discussion about legitimacy. More specifically, how accurate and trustworthy are old documents. We often go about our lives taking what is the first example that is given to us as a fact, and that is not always necessarily true. For example if you had read Francisco Lopez de Gomara’s account of Cortes’s conquest of New Spain, you would be reading a whole handful of falsified facts. He wrote this account with various examples of divine intervention, and Christian background to the conquest. At one point he even goes as far to say that St. James had appeared on a battlefield to help the Spaniards' in their endeavor. 

This is dangerous you see, as if there had been no other accounts of the time to compare this claim to, we would forever be fooled into believing the account of a man who wasn’t even there. There is an issue however with any first hand document that you look for as fact. Almost every first hand account is going to have some sort of a bias placed into the voice of the text, however you have to dive deeper. Yes, Castillo had written his document years later, and he was using this as he legitimacy to his Encomienda, however at least he was there during the conquest. 

With all social media and online journalism today, we tend to look at one source and take it as fact. When in the meantime we have been duped, much like Gormara duped many Spaniards'.