Salsa Conquistador

Once again, apologies for the delay. Without further adieu, here is this week's episode of Copyright Adam Durrant. If I was a gambling person (I am) I would have to wager that everybody and their cousin is blogging about the new suspect in the Ramsey murder case. Crime is one of those things where all people feel entitled to their opinion be it educated or otherwise. But, we do things a little differently here at Copyright Adam Durrant and to be blunt, I have neither the background nor motivation to put forth a blog about a decade old murder. Perhaps one day I will, but not today. Today’s musing comes to you straight from an associated press article that I read on Yahoo news while riding out the post-sushi drowsiness that always seems to hit me forty five minutes after I finish that last sweet piece of raw fish. To summarize the story: The Aztec civilization resisted the Spanish exploration/invasion force led by Hernando Cortez, rather than capitulating to the invaders as was previously believed. The recently un-earthed remains from the city of Tenochtitlan, where Mexico City now stands, show the Aztecs boiled and ate the bodies of captured Europeans as part of their resistance. Why am I taking issue? Because apparently this is a revelation in Meso-American historical studies. My Master of Arts in History is not focused on the aforementioned region, but to assume that the Aztecs just rolled over for the Spaniards and said, “Rape our women and take our gold, we weren’t doing anything with it anyway” has to be one of the most Eurocentric, colonial minded discourses I have ever had the misfortune of hearing. Had I the time, I would find some examples of this line of thought such that I could shame them in my blog. However, I have other things on my plate at the moment. Rest assured comrades that I shall find examples of this shameful history such that they may be lambasted properly. For now, I would like to partake in an exercise of the “Come on?!” discourse of history. Let’s set the wayback machine to the year 1520 in the city of Tenochtitlan. A thriving metropolis of around a quarter of a million people, this city sat as Rome did, the capital of a group of city states all under the iron fist of the Toltec Emperor Mocteuzma II. (I have learned, the term Aztec is a blanket term that is applied far too loosely to all the peoples of Mexico. The city of Tenochtitlan, I have been told, is properly viewed as a Toltec culture). As pre-industrial civilizations go, the Toltec civilization was quite advanced. They had a command over agriculture, engineering, medicine, and astronomy. Their culture was deeply religious, comparable to Rome fifteen hundred years prior. Not a bad place to live so long as you are mindful of the laws, lest you end up on a sacrificial altar. Capital punishment for all, miniature Toltec flags for others. But things had not been going so well during the reign of Emperor Mocteuzma II. The tributary cities around Tenochtitlan had risen in revolt. Stars foretold the fall of the Toltec empire at the hands of Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent god. Specifically, a prophecy concerning Quetzalcoatl stated that he would return to the Earth as a fair skinned and fair haired man riding a horse and bring about much destruction. Personally, I think a fifty foot tall snake-bird would have been a better instrument to wreak pestilence upon a city, but that’s just me and my eccentric ways. So there I am, out working in the fields just beyond the city’s walls. Farming beans like so many other people. It just so happens, by virtue of one of my ancestors, I own the land I work. Although not noble born, I live in an apartment building in a not entirely filthy part of the city. I’m happily married with seven children, all of whom will survive childhood since we have a home with running water. Self employed, lots of kids that I can afford to feed, life is good. Sure I’m worried about the bad portents, I’m just as religious as anybody else, but I have a bean crop that’s at the forefront of my mind. Sometime around noon word reaches my bean field that something is going on near the city’s gate. Surprised, because I don’t remember hearing about an execution planned for today, I go investigate. And what do I see when I get there? Why, it’s a white man with a pointy metal hat riding a big horse. Enter Cortez. There are a few people whispering that this might, in fact, be Quetzalcoatl come to smite us all. But I am still suspicious of this white man on his horse, and even more suspicious of the other white men that are with him. What are those funny metal and wood things they are carrying? “He’s white for Huitzilopochtli’s sake,” Juan from down the street said. “We were told that when Quetzalcoatl returned to wreck up the place he would look like this.” “Does anybody notice how he doesn’t speak Toltec?” I ask after hearing Cortez say something to his minion. “I mean Quetzalcoatl is our god, wouldn’t he speak our language?” However the rest of the bean farmers, being the ignorant folk that they are, drop to their knees, begging that Quetzalcoatl spare their wretched lives. Now obvious that nobody was being executed or could otherwise entertain me, I go back to my beans. Meanwhile, word reaches the city that a white guy riding a horse has shown up with a bunch of other white guys and the ignorant peasant farmers think it’s Quetzalcoatl come with a big bowl of wrath. This is where 21st century Adam must invoke a “Come On?!” Granted, we now have archeological evidence to back up Toltec resistance. But, if I may invoke common sense, do we really think that the priesthood, although willing to sacrifice humans to the invisible gods, would really let the people believe that this white man was the returned Quetzalcoatl? The corporeal existence of this so-called god undermines the political power and wealth that the priesthood accumulated being the sole ecclesiastical authority of the empire. Do we really think they would let people believe in Cortez as a god and sacrifice all of their gold and privilege? Come on! It doesn’t help that while “Quetzalcoatl” is camped outside the city, people start dieing en masse due to the fact that Cortez and the boys brought disease to dwellers of Tenochtitlan like America brought democracy to Iraq. But, once Cortez took an interest in slaves, gold and land, things that gods of any culture don’t bother with, it must have become evident that he was not in fact a god, but just a white devil worthy of sacrifice to the true gods. In the ensuing conflict, of which we now have archeological evidence, we see Toltec priests cutting out the hearts of captured prisoners, offering their entrails to the gods and feasting on the flesh of their enemies. For historians to assume Cortez was victorious because the Toltecs were ignorant is the height of impropriety. You don’t see people in European cultures surrendering to bearded Jewish men on the grounds that they look like Christ? No Norse warlord ever threw down his axe on the grounds that the opposing horde’s leader bore a striking resemblance to Odin? Iroquois war parties never surrendered to the French on the grounds that they were the spirit of the bear in human form. So why would anybody assume this level of ignorance in a Latin American civilization? Notions such as this embody an aging and highly suspect enclave of historians who place too much significance upon European sources when forming historical arguments. This Eurocentric approach to history plagues research in that, when presented with an absence of proof proving contrary, historians will draw suspect conclusions based on questionable evidence. With respect to this instance, Toltec capitulation to Cortez had, according to the associated press on Yahoo, become the dominant discourse in the field. While the evidence may have seemed sound at the time, historians ought not to abandon reason in the face of one-sided doccumentation. We must take ourselves as much as possible out of our offices and libraries and be a part of the period we study. A conscious effort to understand events from the perspective of a participant, and not that of an observer years in the future, will lead to better assumptions when presented with incomplete information. Speculation will always be part of history, but it should be contextualized as much as possible, not manipulated so the book is an easier sell to the academic community. As much as it scares us as historians, we need use our independent thought as a tool of research not just depend on a potentially faulty historiography.