¡O No Coronado! (1992)
By Craig Baldwin
Just when it seemed that the 500th Anniversary of the Spanish conquest would pass without anything more tasteless than Marlon Brando's Torquemada or deflationary than Gerard Depardieu's marble-mouthed Columbus, Craig Baldwin's, ¡O No Coronado! has arrived in town. As fans of Baldwin's Tribulation 99 know, this San Francisco based filmmaker habitually conceptualizes history as a tacky exploitation flick, and, at a machine-gun-paced 40 minutes, Coronado still manages an epic sweep... The first two minutes of Coronado offer more historical perspective than both Columbus epics combined...Coronado, one of the least successful conquistadors, is perfectly suited to Baldwin's purposes in part because his motivation is so blatantly delusional. Arriving in Mexico in 1538, he set out on a fruitless quest to find the imaginary Seven Cities of Cibola. Crossing the desert and the Rio Grande, Coronado explored what is now Arizona and New Mexico, stumbling across the Grand Canyon and engaging in numerous needless fights wit the Indians. The non-existent cities of gold led his expedition as far afield as present-day Kansas, before returning to Mexico City in sodden disarray. Baldwin illustrates…
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