ABSTRACT
One of the more substantial cultural offerings to celebrate the quincentennial of Columbus's discovery of America was broadcast on the Discovery Channel on 19-23 April 1992. Entitled "The Buried Mirror: Reflections of Spain and the New World," it is a series of five one-hour programs on the history of Spain and Spanish America, written and narrated by the celebrated Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes. The ambivalent nature of the conquest is emphasized, as is the fact that it was Spaniards who first raised the issue of the rights of the vanquished. At the same time, Fuentes shows how a genuinely syncretic "Latin America" culture emerged in the seventeenth century. Much has happened in Latin America since these films went into production. Many of the anti-US notions that inform the final installment are positively demode—at least in Latin America, if not in certain venues in the United States.
