Aztecs vs. Spaniards — Moctezuma vs. Cortés

CAMILLA TOWNSEND — FIFTH SUN, A NEW HISTORY OF THE AZTECS — OXFORD UP — 2019

The Aztecs are a mystery in Mesoamerica, in fact in Mexico. Their own name is the Mexica and they are only one people in Mexico which was occupied before the Spaniards arrived sometime after Christopher Columbus by a mosaic of various Indian ethnic groups that are specified as for their ethnic names but that are not specified as for their origins and languages. They are just there, then, coming from no one really knows where without a real specified past. The only language that is mentioned is the Mexica or Aztec language which is Nahuatl.

The only specification about where the Mexica, not the other tribes, came from is summarized at the end as follows: “north, … the land of the remote ancestors, the forbears of Shield Flower and Itzcoatl, who came from the American Southwest.” (page 208) There is a vague allusion to the Mayas who are in the south, in Yucatan, with no more detail, and no connections whatsoever with the Mexica or Aztecs. The Maya are actually only mentioned because of La Malinche who was from the “empire” the Mexica were building in the fifteenth century by making their ethnic neighbors dependent, making them pay a tribute in exchange for peace and more or less self-government. The Maya were beyond this…