orth both to seek and to stage there a

new Mexico, a new Spain: a warlike "theatre" that engages a complicated mix of the metaphoric and the literal, the make-believe and the belief-made-real (see Taussig). Here empire departs to the land of the other, understood-as the mythical space of origin, to repeat itself there. Unlike the discourses of travel and-discovery

, the logic of conquest does not allow for return. In the case of the Spanish kingdom of Castile, expansion entails the continual extension and reproduction of the body politic in conquered lands, in a centuries-long tradition that dates to the reconquista of Muslim territo

ry in the Iberian Peninsula. The Castilian Crown does not treat conquered territories as either colonies or trading outposts,but as the prolongation of the kingdom itself. Thus