The Myth of Completion: The Probanza de Méritos y Servicios and the Noche Triste in Early Colonial New Spain

Taking the Noche Triste of June 30, 1520 as its case study, this paper traces one documentary mechanism through which the probanza de méritos y servicios contributed to what Matthew Restall has called "the myth of completion." Examining a selection of probanzas from the 1520s to the 1550s in New Spain, including a deposition by Hernán Cortés, it argues that the interlocking pressures of the encomienda economy and the categorical logic of the probanza form at scale contributed to the systematic erasure of military failure from the colonial archive by the 1550s.