| TRIUMPHS and TRAGEDY, a History
of The Mexican people (Chapter 1) |
by Prof. German Estrada
November, 2004 |
THE FOREFATHERS (part
21st) continues..
2
THE CONQUEST OF TENOCHTITLÁN
II
All the same, when Cortés stepped ashore in 1521, two Catholic friars accompanied him -Bartolomé de Olmedo, remembered as the "First Apostle of New Spain ," and Juán Diaz. This was shortly after the Reconquista, when Catholic Spain believed itself entrusted with a holy mission; it was a time to save the souls of pagans in the New World . "The Conquest," accordingly, "was the last crusade," an enterprise both military and religious. The bearer of the sword, Cortés made certain that a cross accompany it, as his actions at Cempoala, a Totonac village just off the Gulf coast, illustrate. Cortés, tired of watching its inhabitants sacrifice slaves to their gods, ordered his soldier to destroy the idols in the temple, replacing them with an image of the Virgen and putting flowers at her feet, recalled Diaz del Castillo. Fray Olmedo said mass the next morning. Cortés and the other Conquistadores, occasionally religious zealots themselves, repeated their performance time and time again.
Hernán Cortés's famous Cartas de Relación , letters he wrote Charles I describing his accomplishments, and the book by Diaz del Castillo form part of the epic literature of the Conquest. Much of what is known of the fall of Tenochtitlan stems from the account written by Diaz del Castillo to refute the official version of the Historia general de las Indias , whose author, Francisco Gómez de Gómara, never saw the New World. Born in Spain about 1492, Diaz del Castillo took up arms in 1514, arriving in Cuba from the Isthmus of Panama in time to join Francisco Hernández de Córdoba and Juan de Grijalva on their voyages of exploration. Diaz del Castillo personified the conquistadores. An adventurer, he was an ambitious man, unhappy with his lot in society, and a prototype of the men who, after giving up fighting Indians, spent the rest of their lives looking for ways to get their share of the plunder from the crown, first gold and jewels and the land and Indians to exploit. An encomendero (a man given Indians for labor) in both Mexico and Guatemala , he wrote his account partly to justify his thirst for more spoils.
The Aztecs, too, bequeathed to posterity truncated versions of the Conquest. Studied alongside of Diaz's True History , they provided a fuller account of what actually occurred. But the canticles, written by Aztec poets, date from 1523, after their authors learned to use the alphabet. Of later vintage, and written in Nahuatl but using the Spanish alphabet, is the famous Manuscrito 22, written by natives of Tlatelolco about 1528. Unos anales históricos de la nación Mexicana narrates the destruction of Aztec society. In 1555, under the direction of Fray Bernardino de Sahagun, a Spanish monk, more Aztecs put together the Código Florentino , the most complete "native" portrayal of the Conquest. Pictorial drawings of the Conquest in native glyphs also survive; they tell the story by means of the ancient form of writing, partly ideographic. One is the Lienzo de Tlaxcala (painting on linen cloth) of the mid-sixteenth century. Additional sources are old native codices (manuscripts) of Azcatitlán, Mexicanus, Aubin, and Ramirez. Unlike Bernal Diaz, the Aztecs mourn death of a way of life.
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.
Archives
by date |
Current
Weather Report
