| TRIUMPHS and TRAGEDY, a History
of The Mexican people (Chapter 1) |
by Prof. German Estrada
November, 2004 |
THE FOREFATHERS (part
20th) continues..
2
THE CONQUEST OF TENOCHTITLÁN
I
Terrible omens, telling of dangers ahead, the old chronicles say, beset ancient Anáhuac by 1519. Strange comets belching fire raced through the heavens; for forty days, a bright light was seen to the east; and at night the cries of a woman weeping could be heard, warning her children that they must flee. More factual were other omens. A macehual from the shores of Veracruz reported seeing "towers or mountains floating on the sea, carrying strange beings, white skin, with long beards and hair hanging down to the ears." In Tenochtitlan , fear and dread gripped the superstitious Moctezuma. What the macehual had seen, of course, were the sails of ships of the early Spanish expeditions. The Aztecs did not yet know it, but their universe was about to go up in flames. From then on, Miguel de Cervantes would write, they could "expect nothing but labor for their pains."
II
The Conquest, underlines a distinguished anthropologist, "is a series of events which will remain forever" shrouded in mystery because, as he explains, "no amount of interference from the meager facts recorded can ever establish" the full truth. European commentators left behind scores of accounts but, he emphasizes, what the natives thought "about what was happening to them" was never adequately taken down. From the beginning, there were virtually no native versions of their reactions to the invaders. True, occasionally, the words of some native leaders were set down, but, even then, the recording was done by Europeans, which gives a European slant.
"Again and again, what purports to be a record of the native viewpoint is actually what the European writers thought the natives were thinking."
Rare was the Spanish chronicler who was equipped to report objectively on what was taking place. Even when sympathetic, as the observations of some early friars certainly were, their versions display "the inevitable bias of writers from one culture looking through the barriers of language and cultural differences at the members of another." Nothing can be done to eliminate this prejudice. Even after long contact with Indians, moreover, Spaniards only infrequently altered their views. One Jesuit missionary, for example, even after half a century among the Tarahumaras of Chihuahua , could still write that they were "by nature and disposition a sly and crafty folk from whom sincerity is not to be expected." He labeled them "accomplish hypocrites." His bias was not unique. It would be foolhardy to take seriously this unqualified indictment of a conquered people. Surely, if this Jesuit had made contact with Indians as one human being to another, he would have offered a more balanced appraisal. Historians of the Spanish Conquest of Mexico , therefore, most never close their eyes to this distortion.
As in similar feats of usurpation, the thirst for profit largely explains the Spanish Conquest of Tenochtitlan . That Queen Isabella sold their jewels to finance Christopher Columbus's voyage in 1492 is simple a lovely myth. From the start, the crown of Spain gave carte blanche to a legion of freebooters, asking only for a share of their plunder. The lust for personal gain, whether of soldiers of fortune or royal despots, poured the foundations of colonial Mexico . The lure of adventure and the crusade to Christianized pagans, of course, played important roles; yet, after all is said and done, the dream of striking it rich played drove Spaniards to gamble their lives on risky New World enterprises.
For Spaniards of the epoch, profit meant gold and silver. The hunger for land and Indians to till it came later, not until virtually the next generation of Spaniards. From the days of Hernán Cortés, it was the lust for precious metals that drove Spaniards. At the age of eighty-four, when he completed his legendary Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España, Bernal Diaz del Castillo, a soldier in that undertaking, recalled vividly gifts of gold sent Cortés by Moctezuma, emperor of the Aztecs. "It was a wonderful thing to see," he wrote of a "gold disk representing the sun and as large as a cartwheel..worth, we learned later..over ten thousand pesos."
Source: From the book Triumphs
and Tragedy, a History of the Mexican People by his
author Ramon Eduardo Ruiz, and with his authorization.
(W.W. Norton & Company. New York-London). We'll continue with this fascinating
book.
estradanav@yahoo.com
Prof. Germán
Estrada is the author of the best selling book,
"México
Mágico: Everything You Wanted To Know
About... But Nobody Told You..." available in Puerto
Vallarta at The Net House, Mail Boxes, Etc., Books,
Books as well as directly from the author by internet.
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