SOURCE: "Two Studies on the Same Subject," in Columbus, Cortés, and Other Essays, edited and translated by Lesley Byrd Simpson, University of California Press, 1969, pp. 34-63.

In the following piece, Iglesia has combined two essays from different points in his career. In the first, he praises the democratic principle Díaz promotes; in the second, which followed Iglesia's own military experience, he suggests that Díaz too harshly criticizes Gómara's History of the Conquest of Mexico.

I am aware that it is not quite the thing for a historian to talk about himself; but I cannot avoid it, nor do I wish to do so. Before the Spanish Civil War I was preparing a critical edition of the True History of the Conquest of New Spain by Bernal Díaz del Castillo. Having been invited to read a paper before the XXVI Congress of Americanists at...