Our history is not perfect. Let’s move on

THERE’S a lot to learn from the way Mexico acknowledges the past but refuses to be paralysed by it. We can do the same by ending the Australia Day debate, writes David Penberthy.

ONE of the surprise pleasures of this summer was heading to the movies with the kids to see the animated Disney feature Coco.

Ostensibly a children’s movie, Coco is in fact a sophisticated and informed celebration of Mexican heritage and culture.

This film could not have been released at a better time.

The Mexican people have faced sustained and moronic defamation from their boorish new neighbour in Donald Trump. There was his baseless claim that everyone who yearns to emigrate from Mexico to the US is a rapist, to his more recent and equally false assertion that drug cartels have made Mexico the most dangerous country on earth, ignoring the fact that the chief reason these cartels exist is to feed the insatiable American appetite for illicit drugs.
People like Trump are too culturally ignorant to believe you could ever learn anything from the history of a place like Mexico. It’s in that spirit that I reference the Mexicans today, as we again find ourselves plunged into that circular annual debate about the merits or otherwise of celebrating Australia Day.

Proponents on either side of the debate have spent much of the past month arguing about the impact of British colonisation on our indigenous people. Tony Abbott and others have cheerily suggested that the arrival of the Brits was pretty much the best thing that could have happened to Aboriginal Australians, bringing as they did the rule of law and a civilised value system which forebode the mistreatment of indigenous people, and prosecuted offenders in the rare event that any atrocities occurred.
Indigenous activists and their supporters counter that the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788, however benign Arthur Phillip might have been, was an uninvited and hostile act that signalled the beginning of a cultural and proprietary takeover.

However bleak some parts of our history are, they are a vision of peace compared to the relentless brutality of Mexico’s colonial history. From 1492 onwards, the many indigenous nations of Mexico and Central America found themselves in a state of permanent all-out war with the conquering Spaniards. The Spanish were so convinced of their theological supremacy that they made a point of reclaiming soil around indigenous pyramids and erecting churches on top of the mounds, leaving the locals in no doubt as to who was running the show. Resistance was always met with violence.
What is now known as Mexico City, the former Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, saw the worst brutality. In 1521 the chief conquistador Hernán Cortes orchestrated a siege where he cut the city off from its only food supply, the Tlatelolco market, and blocked the aqueduct that brought in the water.
The Aztecs held out for seven months, their leader Cuahtemoc finally surrendering on August 13 after being caught trying to escape. He was subsequently tortured and then executed four years later on a bogus charge of conspiring to assassinate Cortes.

The site of the Tlatelolco siege is known in Mexico today as La Plaza de las Tres Culturas, the Plaza of the Three Cultures. It bears the following brief inscription:

“On August 13, 1521, heroically defended by Cuauhtemoc, Tlatelolco fell into the hands of Hernan Cortes. It was neither a triumph nor a defeat, but the painful birth of the nation that is Mexico today.”

Mexico City might be a beautiful place today, but like many modern cities it was founded after brutal conflict. (Pic: iStock)

They are elegant and powerful words. They are powerful because they circumvent an endless argument about the undeniable brutality of Mexico’s past. What’s done is done, they say. The country should move beyond that history of violence and division and look instead towards the future.
They are words that we could learn from in Australia, trapped as we are in a debate which often feels like it has been hijacked by insecure white Australians who refuse to broach any criticism of our past, and insist that anything less than a boozy barbecue and a rousing chorus of “Aussie Aussie Aussie” is an act of treason on this supposedly sacrosanct day, and on the other side of the coin, the resolutely guilt-driven rhetoric of those who hold that our history is nothing other than bleak, brutal and shameful.

Our history might not be perfect but it is vastly preferable to that of many other nations. It is certainly vastly more peaceful than the history of Mexico, yet Mexico has done a more astute and effective job of acknowledging its own past while insisting that it not be paralysed by it. We need to find a way of moving beyond this tiresome national debate about something as superficial as a date on the calendar. None of it has any bearing at all on the actual living standards or educational outcomes or job opportunities of indigenous Australians, all of which lag behind the rest of our community. Celebrating another date, or not celebrating at all, would not be a first step towards addressing any of those tangible issues.
Worse, it would have the opposite of effect of the sentiments contained in that Mexican inscription. White Australia didn’t win, indigenous Australia didn’t lose, a modern nation was born. What’s done is done, we are all here together, it is up to us to get on with things, and with each other.
If the Mexicans can do it we should be able to, too.

Originally published as Our history is not perfect. Let’s move on