Learning history through textbooks: are Mexican and Spanish students taught the same story?

Teaching history, compared to other school subjects is characterised from country to country by widely varying content. This has been commented on by both historians (Ferro and Ahonen) and psychologists ( J of Narrative and Life History 4 (1994) 295). In this paper, some of the events that occurred in 1492 and their representation in history textbooks have been selected in order to analyse the content of Mexican and Spanish textbooks. These two countries have been selected because it is anticipated that they will offer very different views about these controversial historical topics and some of the characters involved, such as Columbus. The analysis of textbook content indeed showed two different views of the same event by Mexico and Spain. This paper discusses the influence of these views in the formation of different national identities.