Noble Savage Death Cult
Overlooked. UK Telegraph art critic Richard Dorment on the British Museum’s big Moctezuma exhibit:
As a subject for a major exhibition, the British Museum’s Moctezuma couldn’t have failed. The life and death confrontation between two men, the Aztec leader Moctezuma and the Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortez, is, quite simply, the most compelling story of all time – a thrilling adventure, a Darwinian struggle, and a human tragedy in which one civilization is destroyed and another is born.
…
What is missing from all this is the horror. By playing down the Mexica practice of human sacrifice, which took place on a scale unparalleled in history, the curators avoid sensationalism but also make it hard to understand what so horrified the Spanish about the culture they found in the New World. For the Mexica, the gods of earth, wind, rain and fire demanded propitiation with the blood both of warriors captured in battle and of Montezuma’s own people. As any schoolboy knows, the victim’s breast was ripped open and his heart torn from his body while he was still alive. Moctezuma – or at least his priests – also went in for cannibalism and child sacrifice.
Although the show is more theatrical than is usual at the BM, this all-pervasive death cult is not singled out for special attention …
What the show doesn’t mention is that (as far as I know) Mexica art is unique in having no representations of human love or kindness, either between mothers and children or men and women.
Here, I must admit that Mesoamerican art of any kind is pretty low on my pleasure-meter. The most innocuous-looking objects reek of death.
The incredible tale of Cortes’ triumph and the Aztec leader’s downfall, as Dorment notes, is quite possibly the greatest story of conquest and political drama ever told. It is important to understand that Cortes as a Spanish provincial noble came out of 800 years of Spanish resistance to Moorish domination, and was a lawyer on top of that. A lethal combination of boldness and wile was deeply ingrained.
Moctezuma, though no slouch as an autocrat who had expanded the Aztec empire and his own power as absolute monarch, was strangely beguiled by this small band of strange creatures who appeared on his shore, immediately figured out the local power structure and superstitions and started playing them, to conquer his empire with an army of his own subjects. The cultural makeover that followed was corrupt, exploitative and often brutal. But as Dorment also notes, as fashionable as it has been to disparage European exploration and conquest, the Mexican example is unequivocally an example of imperialistic imposition that was a vast improvement over the brutal, exploitative corruption it supplanted, and cleared the way for Mexico to become … the corrupt, exploitative and often brutal democracy it is today.
The image at top shows Aztec obsidian sacrificial blades embedded in a skull; also, Cortes and Moctezuma’s encounter; and the Codex Mendoza’s illustration of an Aztec sacrifice.
Some reading:
Letters from Mexico Hernan Cortes
The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico Miguel Leon-Portillo
History of the Conquest of Mexico William H. Prescott
(Reader Roque Nuevo recommends Salvador de Madariaga as a companion to Prescott, who he and I both liked a lot. Here are three: The Heart of Jade a novel of the Conquest, good reviews, in Spanish, if you prefe,. El Corazon de Piedra Verde … a bio, Hernan Cortes: Conqueror of Mexico also well-reviewed, with an interesting de Madariaga bio at the link … and The Rise of the Spanish American Empire.)
The Conquest of New Spain Bernal Diaz del Castillo
Victors and Vanquished: Spanish and Nahua Views of the Conquest of Mexico Stuart B. Schwartz
Conquistador: Hernan Cortes, King Montezuma, and the Last Stand of the Aztecs Buddy Levy
Conquest: Cortes, Montezuma, and the Fall of Old Mexico Hugh Thomas
The Aztecs: Rise and Fall of an Empire Serge Gruzinski
Daily Life of the Aztecs on the Eve of the Spanish Conquest Jacques Soustelle
The story of Cortes and Moctezuma is an epic that could use a cinematic update, in the right hands. Meanwhile, some viewing:
Apocalypto Mel Gibson masterpiece depicts Mayans with a conquistador cameo. Same basic idea re human sacrifice.
In Search of History – The Aztec Empire
Secrets of the Dead: Aztec Massacre
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Topics: Mexico, hated Crusaders
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:32 am Comments (2) on Tuesday, September 29, 2009
2 Responses to “Noble Savage Death Cult”
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September 30th, 2009 at 5:36 pm
This makes me wonder when some big-time producer will make a movie of the conquest of Mexico. It has everything the public could want: drugs, sex, extreme violence, betrayal, huge battle scenes, etc etc.
Dormant strikes the right notes, strangely enough in this age of multiculturalism. I would have expected him to speculate that the Spanish destroyed a culture that would have invented laptop computers and world peace if given the chance.
The irony in your last sentence is also on target and don’t think that Mexicans themselves are not painfully aware of it every day as they struggle against all odds to just make it through the day.
One point I’d dispute a bit is that the Spanish advantages consisted of horses and firearms, plus the diseases they had. These are undeniable, but they also had an advantage in strategy. The Aztecs did not fight for conquest (although they did control a tribute empire). They fought for captives to feed to the gods. They fought for personal glory. Thus they were not capable of executing anything like a strategy to fight the Spanish. For example, they would charge the Spanish in a group, looking for the best warriors to kill, which would enhance their status. Thus they became perfect targets for Spanish cannon. Cortez only had around five hundred soldiers at the beginning. Even with horses and firearms, it’s hard to see how they could defeat armies of tens of thousands if they didn’t have advantages in strategy.
Also, the Spanish had an advantage in leadership. Cortez was a brilliant leader, of course and Moctezuma was a weak and ineffectual one. Dormant notes his murder by his own people. This event meant new leadership, which handed the Spanish their one and only defeat, in which they lost the immense treasure trove they found in their palace. By the time the Spanish could recoup, their diseases had taken their toll on the Aztecs. But still, they had to burn the city to the ground before they could conquer it. Under this kind of leadership, the Spanish may not have been able to even make it to Mexico City from the coast, let alone be lodged their at government expense etc etc.
The Spanish conquest of Mexico seems inevitable today, but to Cortez and his men it was anything but. Other nations, like the Chinese and Japanese, managed to keep the Europeans out for centuries. The Mexicans could have as well if they had had their wits about them.
The horse/firearms/disease explanation is a cop out for Mexican sensibilities. Leadership and strategy are the most reasonable explanations. Mexicans lost fair and square, not because of some unfair advantage the Spanish had.
October 13th, 2009 at 10:36 am
[...] reading: Jules Crittenden’s Noble Savage Death Cult Richard Dorment’s Moctezuma at the British Museum, review The BM’s Moctezuma show is a [...]