Jessica Fernandez de Lara Harada selected as advisor on landmark BBC history series.
I would like to think of tv series like Civilisations: Rise and Fall as one step in the unending process of learning: they can be the spark that incites curiosity to learn; they can be the middle point where it simply adds images and helps visualise stories already familiar; or they can be a prompt to build otherwise through constructive criticism.
Jessica Fernandez de Lara Harada
Jessica Fernandez de Lara Harada was approached by the production team behind the landmark BBC Arts Civilisations: Rise and Fall documentary series at the start of the year. “They were very interested in learning more about my research, particularly about my reflections on the colonial period of what is now known as Mexico,” she says.
As part of her doctoral thesis, Jessica had written about Iberian empires in the Americas beginning in the 16th century, with a particular focus on indigeneity, colonialism and race.
After several informal interviews aimed at carefully selecting the main contributors of the four-part series, Jessica was notified that the team had decided to invite her for an interview to be an advisor on the series – a longstanding BBC strand which was first released in 1969 with Kenneth Clark as presenter and has since been presented by academics including David Olusoga, Mary Beard and Simon Schama.
The story of Malintzin
Jessica [2016], who has taken part in a variety of podcasts and tv and radio programmes, was selected to be one of the main contributors for the episode on the Aztec Empire. She provides expert commentary and appears on screen, telling the story of the powerful figure of Malintzin, a Nahua woman, and how the myths that have been constructed over time around her role in the conquest of Mexico underlie contemporary discourses on the Mexican ‘mestizo’ (mixed-race) nation. This has been one of the main areas of Jessica’s research for over a decade.
Because Malintzin did not leave a personal record of her life, Jessica says we can only speculate about what her life was like, drawing on indigenous annals, Spanish chronicles, ethnographic and archeological accounts, legal documents and an empathetic reading of what she left behind. Her family is believed to be part of the local elite in the part of Veracruz state where she grew up. It is thought that, as a child, she was separated from her family for four years and perhaps enslaved among the Mayas, a neighbouring civilisation. After the latter lost a battle against the Spaniards, she was given to the Spanish as a peace offering (or perhaps as a gift to build an alliance), alongside several other women.
This background is little known in Mexico, says Jessica, where most people know her as the translator and interpreter of the Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes who helped him to defeat Moctezuma, conquer Tenochtitlan and impose Spanish rule over indigenous peoples in what is now known as Mexico. According to this story, Malintzin is responsible for the defeat of the Aztec Empire and accused of having betrayed her own people. But Jessica says Malintzin’s childhood is likely to have been a significant factor in her sense of belonging.
She says: “I hope to convey this intricate story of Malintzin as a powerful historical agent during and after the Aztec Empire so that the audience will continue reckoning with the legacies of the various portrayals of Malintzin, and their impact on various forms of gender violence, captivity, forced labour and family separations, to mention a few pressing issues that continue to affect many, in contemporary Mexico.”
Part of the learning process
Jessica hopes the series is informative and both challenges and expands viewers’ understanding of important topics. She says: “I would like to think of these kinds of television series as one step in the unending process of learning: they can be the spark that incites curiosity to learn; they can be the middle point where it simply adds images and helps visualise stories already familiar; or they can be a prompt to build otherwise through constructive criticism.”
She adds: “I was moved by the dedication, care and attention of the various wonderful teams at the BBC and the British Museum involved in its making, who made me feel welcome, safe and confident in making a significant contribution all the time. It is impressive the number of brilliant and caring people who have come together to make this series, enriching our understanding about the human stories at the heart of these civilisations by weaving different ways of seeing and reckoning with the past, present and future of our shared humanity.”
She is a passionate supporter of BBC Arts programming, saying: “Supporting the BBC is absolutely critical, especially at this moment when the process of renewing the BBC’s Royal Charter begins in earnest – a process that will define the scale and scope of the BBC for the long term.”
She cites Suzy Klein, Head of BBC Arts & Classical Music TV, who remarked that the series “comes at a particularly poignant time, as we live through our own period of social and cultural change. The series explores not just the rise, but the fall of these four great civilisations and the factors contributed to their decline from prominence, and the roles that pandemic, inequality, migration, climate change, warfare and poor leadership had to play.”
Belonging
Jessica’s research has attracted a lot of interest from other students seeking to explore questions of belonging, thanks in part to her public engagement work. This term alone she has received eight emails from prospective PhD students wanting her to supervise their research. She also hears from others who have been influenced by her research, such as a Canadian Okinawan artist who wrote to thank her for an article she wrote because it had given him some context about his family history of migration from Japan to the Americas. She states: “Making sure that my research reaches others is central to my personal and professional growth, and as such I see it as one of the most important, if also challenging and encouraging, aspects of what I am and do.”
Jessica, now a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Contemporary History and Public Policy of Mexico at the University of Oxford, is currently writing two books, one based on her doctoral thesis at Cambridge about the life experiences of ‘mestizaje’ (racial mixing) of Japanese families in Mexico across five generations. The book grew out of her interest in unearthing the life stories of Japanese people in Mexico from the early 20th century to the aftermath of the Second World War. It carefully touches on matters of war, captivity and dispossession, as well as assimilation, survival and transformation.
Her second book is a memoir that tells her family life history in Mexico as a descendant of a mixed-race Afro-Indigenous and Japanese family and reflects on loss, orphanhood, grief, motherhood and belonging.
*Photo credit: Tricia Yourkevich. “Civilisations: Rise and Fall” airs on BBC Two on Mondays at 9pm. You can also watch episodes on demand via BBC iPlayer shortly after they are broadcast.
