It's Wednesday my dudes! On this week's episode of Gladio Free Europe, we take a look at an area of history deeply plagued by myths: the Spanish invasion of the Aztec Empire. Unfortunately, there is a new vector for said myths. The 2019 Spanish-Mexican joint production Hernán is the most expensive Spanish-language television show to date, and while it does have its strong points, the show not only relies on traditional Spanish accounts of the invasion which oftentimes misrepresented the peoples of Mesoamerica, but it also goes beyond that by including entirely fictionalized elements to add to the drama of the events.

We talked to Paul Guinan, author of Aztec Empire , which is a comic book which seeks to both entertain and educate the general public with a more truthful depiction of the Spaniards and the indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica. We dig into Hernán to talk about what the show did incorrectly (a phenomenon which we've decided to call "Sadboy Cortes", the unseemly nature of the romance depicted between Cortes and his interpreter Malintzin, the supposed belief of the peoples of Mesoamerica that the Spaniards were Gods, etc.) as well as making an effort to provide a more nuanced understanding of what exactly went on in the years 1519 to 1521.

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