The fall of the Mexica (Aztec) empire and the mass genocide caused by it, can certainly not be illustrated by a bronze statue of a Spanish conquistador covered in red paint.
An article published by Spanish newspaper El Mundo grabbed my attention just a few days ago.
Or to be quite frank, it was the photograph (see below) published to illustrate the article what first caught my attention.
The photograph showed a bronze statue of Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés that according to the newspaper had been vandalized by a group called ‘Ciudadanos Anónimos’ (anonimous citizens).
The bronze statue had, in the hands of the protesters, been covered in bright red paint as an illustration of the mass genocide that, in the opinion of the protesters, had been inflicted on the Mexican people by Cortés in XVI century Mexico.
Today, 13th of August and now almost 500 years ago – 489 years to be precise – the city of Tenochtitlan did, in fact, fall into the hands of Cortés.
I am not sure if the proximity of this date fueled the protesters' actions but whether the link between the fall of Mexico and their act of ‘vandalism’ was deliberate or not, it proves that the legacy of the wounds inflicted by Cortés and his party still runs deep; that the fall of the Mexica (Aztec) empire into the hands of the Spaniards is still - almost half a millennium later – controversial. The mass genocide of the Mexicans ‘by the Spaniards’.
The thing is Cortés did not act alone. Not that this justifies any type of genocide. But how could an empire fall into the hands of just a few hundred? This doesn’t just happen. Does it?
Setting aside the military superiority of European weaponry or even the strategic superiority of Cortés’ mind, it is a fact that the Mexica empire fell into the hands of the Spaniard with the help of an intricate and very complex web of political and military alliances between the Spaniards and the Mexicans themselves.
Yes, Mexicans. Hundreds of thousands of them. Unhappy Mexicans who – if I’m allowed to draw a parallel with contemporary history – looked at the tyranny of the Mexican central administration run by Moctezuma with the same terror than Iraqis felt about Saddam Hussein. Were the hundreds of thousands of Mexicans who were sacrificed by the central administration of the Mexica led by Moctezuma simply victims of sacrifice? Wasn’t this also mass-genocide? By the Mexicans themselves.
It is difficult to get into the mindset of someone like Cortés. Someone who lived in the XVI century.
Had Cortés arrived in Mexico and witness what in his über Catholic eyes was truly mass-genocide: ‘sacrifice’ and seen that everyone in Mexico was fine about this type of death, that sacrifice was ‘always’ looked upon by Mexicans as a rite, part of their culture, something that ‘all’ Mexicans’ were fine about, Cortés would probably have accepted it as such. Something acceptable to what for him was, truly, an alien culture.
But the truth is that many, hundreds of thousands, hundreds of Mexican subgroups that were taxed and lived under the yoke of the central administration of the Mexica, were in fact not happy at all. They were in fact terrified. Terrified to see their own folk captured and brought to a certain death on the sacrificial stone.
For the last few years I have been reading extensively about the fall of Mexico. Eyewitness accounts written by those who, like front-line reporters, lived to tell the tale.
Of course there was mass genocide. History, rather sadly, knows this word so well. But the genocide that occurred during the fall of Mexico was not only inflicted by the Spaniards.
It wasn’t simply genocide of Mexicans by Spaniards. It was also the sacrificial genocide of ‘Mexicans by Mexicans’ and it was also the genocide of Mexicans who died in the hands of hundreds of thousands of Mexicans. Mexicans who allied themselves with the Spaniards in order to liberate themselves from the tyranny of the central administration.
The fall of the Mexica empire and the mass genocide caused by it, can certainly not be illustrated by a bronze statue of a Spanish conquistador covered in red paint.
