Restall, Matthew. Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest. Oxford: University Press, 2003.

Page 52: "Festivals of conquest and reconquest not only offer insights into the roles played by native warriors on both sides of the Conquest wars, but also depict other oft-ignored participants -- such as Africans. For example, the performance of of the Conquest of Rhodes was staged in Mexico City in 1539, in response to news of an anti-Ottoman truce the year before by the Spanish and French monarchs. The play was an elaborate affair whose vast sets were constructed by more than fifty thousand workmen (Africans and local natives) according to Bernal Díaz."

Basically, many thousands of actors were involved.

The complicated scenario is finally brought to a head and "then resolved by the arrival of of a cavalry of more than fifty black men and women (Díaz again), led by a black king and queen."

"For Africans, their entrance into the play on horseback must have been a proud celebration of their military prowess, of a conquistador status so seldom permitted public recognition. All those present must have been reminded that barely 18 months earlier, in the autumn of 1537, an unknown number of the 10,000 Africans already resident in Mexico City had allegedly plotted a slave revolt and crowned a rebel black king. This slave monarch, along with other black leaders, had then been publicly executed -- and was surely resurrected, in the minds of the city's blacks, in the form of the festival's African king.

"Whatever their identity or perspective, none of the inhabitants of Mexico City in 1539 would have viewed a black presence in that year's festival of conquest as incongruous. All took for granted the fact that Africans too had participated in the real Conquest."

Pages 120-121 "In 1539, Jerusalem was attacked by three Christian armies at once. One was an imperial force led by Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and king of Spain, accompanied by his brother, the king of Hungary, and French King Francis I. This army had come as reinforcements for a separate Spanish army led by the Count of Benavente. The third attacking force was the army of New Spain, led by Viceroy Mendoza. The battle raged for hours, until the Muslim defenders of Jerusalem finally capitulated. Their leader, the Great Sultan of Babylon and Tetrarch of Jerusalem, was none other than the Marqués del Valle, Hernando Cortés.

"This battle did not actually take place in the mIddle East, but in the vast central plaza of Tlaxcala, the Nahua city-state whose alliance with Cortés had proved crucial to his defeat of the Mexica empire almost two decades earlier. The mock battle, part of a day-long series of plays and battles, was staged on Corpus Christie day by the Tlaxcalans, with the possible assistance of Franciscan friars. One of the friars witnessed the spectacle and wrote an account of it, published soon after in Motolinías History of the Indians of New Spain.

"While a mock battle in which the victorious armies are led by the Spanish king, the colonial Mexican viceroy, and a Spanish count prominent in colonial Mexican affairs might seem to be celebration of the Spanish Conquest of Mexico, Tlaxcala's theatrical Conquest of Jerusalem was hardly that. Cortés (played by a native Tlaxcalan actor) was not the victor in the drama, but the Sultan, doomed to defeat -- and the captain general of the Moors was Pedro de Alvarado, the second most prominent Spaniard in the fall of Tenochtitlán and the subsequent conqueror of highland Guatemala. As the losers, Cortés and Alvarado requested mercy and baptism, and admitted that they were the natural vassals of the Tlaxcalan-played Charles V -- an interesting inversion of the conquistadors' claim that natives were naturally subject to Spanards."

Yessiree! You just gotta read the rest of the story!

"So how do I do that?"

First: you need to get in line at the book check out counter at the UTEP library, and slap a hold on this book just as fast as you can, as it should be turned back in by tomorrow, Friday, May 26, 2006, if not tonight.

Second: Get together with some of your friends and colleagues, and in a body, go to the UTEP Book Store and demand -- and don't even waste your breath by politely asking -- x number of copies at, say, $5.00 a copy -- then just wait and see what happens!

"After all, you never know: UTEP is a parallel universe to the Real World, and thus perception is reality!"