That fictional deathbed scene leads us to the third metaphorical tree branch: Montezuma’s keen interest in the Spaniards, and his seemingly calm and amiable demeanor (he had, after all, succeeded in neutralizing the invaders and turning them into collected specimens) was imagined by them as love—love for the conquistadors in general, for Cortés in particular, and for his new status as a vassal of the king. (Some even claimed later that Montezuma wished to convert to Christianity, but Cortés said he needed further instruction.)
This “mysterious convergence” tying the two men together was laid on thickly by Gómara and his successors (to reflect Cortesian control and magnetism, in contrast to Montezuma’s innate inferiority and passivity). But other writers seized upon the notion of Montezuma’s Stockholm syndrome with an enthusiasm equal to the Spanish chroniclers. In the eighteenth century, for example, Dilworth stated that Montezuma grew “particularly fond of” Cortés, and on one occasion embraced him “with great affection.” The emperor was “perfectly well satisfied” with his state of virtual captivity within the city center, becoming “every day more and more attached” to his captor. When Cortés returned to Tenochtitlan with Narváez, Montezuma came “as far as the outward court to meet Cortes”—an echo of the Meeting of a few months earlier—“whom he caressed in a transport of joy, which could not possibly be the effect of dissimulation.” Similarly, Campe told young readers that while the Aztec emperor hoped the Spaniards would soon go home, and was thus overjoyed when Cortés told him ships were being built, he was also exuberantly fond of the captain; upon hearing of the ships, “Montezuma could not conceal the extravagance of his joy upon this expected answer; he fell upon the general’s neck, overwhelmed him with caresses.”34
In one French account, the flow of affection was reversed and the theme used to make a wry joke about Spaniards: “From that time [Cortés] attempted to become their Master, and at the first he endeavoured to gain them by all possible kindness, and to win the hearts of the Mexicans [Aztecs] by his courteous and sweet comportment, and indeed he was so affable and loving, that they thought him not to be a Spaniard.”35 But by and large, Montezuma’s demeanor during the Phoney Captivity became elemental to the evolution of his personality; Sigüenza y Góngora, quoting Torquemada, emphasized that “while among the Castilians, this king was so affable, so loving, that hardly a day passed when he did not do favors for someone.” Or, in the words of the twentieth-century Galician intellectual Filgueira Valverde:
There were almost happy days when the Aztec lord and the Spanish captain lived familiarly together, showing each other favors and proofs of friendship, the hours enlivened by the vagaries of game-playing, by bouts of hunting, by fine singing, and by the pleasant humor of the captive king, always generous toward both guards and servants.36
As another historian recently remarked, in response to Díaz’s story of the conquistadors and Montezuma laughing at Pedro de Alvarado cheating at the Aztec game of totoloque: Montezuma had been turned into “a king from out of a chivalric romance.”37
Filgueira Valverde was simply a link in a chain of repetition going back centuries, whereby conquistador recollections of their extraordinary sojourn as guests of Montezuma—the food, the women, the excursions to palaces and markets and zoos, the hunting and game-playing—were repackaged as details from the emperor’s joyful captivity. Evidence of Montezuma learning about Spanish technology was recast as Cortés patronizing or deceiving the adoring emperor; thus Cortés showing Montezuma how to use a crossbow was part of their games together, and the four forty-foot brigantines that the Spaniards built for Montezuma, which he then used on hunting trips, grew into a ruse whereby “the conquistadors gained priceless information about the lake.”38
No doubt both Aztecs and Spaniards saw the brigantines as useful to them, as a reflection on their status as hosts and captors, and were unaware or in denial regarding how the other side saw the boats—and the entire situation. This double-sided perception helped to create confusing accounts of some of Vásquez de Tapia’s mysterious “important events” of the Phoney Captivity—events already confused by the traditional narrative’s inversion of who was in control and who captive.
Examples are the incidents involving Cohualpopocatzin (or Qualpopoca) and Cacama (more properly, Cacamatzin). Qualpopoca was the tlahtoani of a town in the empire’s eastern region, where Spaniards were still maintaining a semblance of a settlement (Vera Cruz). Early in the 235 days of the Phoney Captivity this lord and some of his noblemen were arrested, brought to Tenochtitlan, and publicly executed (by “dogging”—mauled by Spanish mastiffs—and then burned alive). Cortés claimed this was punishment for killing Spaniards near the coast, thus supporting the lie of his control over the empire. But the details of what Qualpopoca did, and why, were contradictory and unpersuasive in accounts by Cortés and other Spaniards. For, in fact, the machinations of Aztec imperial politics were also at work, beyond the grasp of the conquistadors (and therefore us). The execution that the Spaniards witnessed was surely seen by the Aztecs as a variant on what those same Spaniards were denouncing as “human sacrifice,” probably presented to the populace as part of that month’s festival (and, for Montezuma and his noblemen, a fascinating display of a Caxtilteca variant on ritual killing).39
Cacama was the tlahtoani of Tetzcoco; he had met the Spaniards near the borders of his domain and escorted them to Tenochtitlan in early November. He was Montezuma’s nephew and the second-ranked king in the empire’s Triple Alliance. According to Cortés and the traditional narrative, Cacama objected to his uncle’s surrender to Cortés, and began to plot an attack on the Spaniards with the third king in the Alliance, that of Tlacopan. Quauhpopocatl of Coyohuacan may also have been implicated, along with the ruler of Ixtlapalapan. Cortés then claimed to cleverly conspire with Montezuma to have them all arrested and brought to Tenochtitlan to swear allegiance to none other than Cortés—who claimed he then replaced Cacama with his brother Coanacoch. (This absurd claim has been the basis for centuries of even greater ones, such as “Here Cortes made Kings, and comaunded with as great authoritie as though he had obtayned already the whole Empire of Mexico.”)40
While the presence of the Spaniards in the city may have been a factor in the incident, its larger non-Cortesian context was the power-jostling among the three kings that underpinned the Alliance; never an equal partnership, the balance of authority was constantly tested, further complicated by the fact that intermarriage had turned the royal families into one sprawling dynasty (see the Dynastic Vine in the Appendix). There was also another twist: after forty-three years as Tetzcoco’s tlahtoani, the great Nezahualpilli had died four years before the Spanish invasion, leaving many sons and a succession dispute that was complicated by the Spanish-Aztec War. Six of the those sons would end up as tlahtoani of Tetzcoco—Cacama the first, then Coanacoch, followed by Ixtlilxochitl, whose role in the last half of the war would prove crucial. In short, while the Spaniards may ultimately have benefited from the Aztec Empire’s intra-dynastic and inter-altepetl politics, in the early months of 1520 they were a long way from understanding its complexities, let alone controlling them.
IF MONTEZUMA’S SURRENDER was an invention, and his captivity phoney, why did the Spaniards not denounce the lie later on—when, for example, some gave testimony in the Cortés residencia investigation that was critical of him? As MacNutt remarked, only “unanimity of testimony served to remove from the sphere of fable” history’s “most supremely audacious act . . . so stupefying in his conception and so incredible in its execution.” In fact, there are many reasons to question that testimony and restore the Phoney Captivity to “fable.”41
To begin with, consider that most of the conquistadors who sailed from Cuba in 1519 were dead by the end of 1520, or alive but had never set foot in Montezuma’s Tenochtitlan. And most of the men who fought in the battle in Tenochtitlan that marked the end of the Phoney Captivity had come with Narváez, so that even the survivors of that battle had e
ntered a city that was already up in arms. In short, fewer than 10 percent of the thousands of Spaniards who participated in the war were both in Tenochtitlan during the Phoney Captivity and survived beyond 1521 to talk about it.
Furthermore, an even smaller percentage were able to see the Meeting, and only a handful could have heard any speeches or the subsequent conversations that took place between the Spanish captains and Montezuma and his nobles. For most the conquistadors in the city, their information and understanding of what was going on came from the captains and the discussions within cohorts. With their immediate needs met—an abundance of servants, including indigenous “wives” and sex slaves, plenty of food, a stockpiling of precious metals and other valuables, no apparent threat of sudden attack—there was little reason to question the official story.
Indeed, any Spaniard later questioning the Surrender and calling the captivity phoney would have run the risk of crossing the line of treason and committing lèse majesté (lesa majestad). As Brooks noted, even Las Casas did not deny “the natural right of Spain to rule.” In time, “the myth of Montezuma’s submission was so established that it was unquestioningly accepted, even by people who had been present” (to quote Thomas, despite his verdict of this being “certainly possible” but not probable). By the 1570s, Durán could show a genuine curiosity in the truth, because it hardly mattered; he found it “difficult to believe” sources showing Montezuma seized right after the Meeting, and thereafter kept “in irons, wrapped in a mantle, carried on the shoulders of his caciques,” because “I have yet to meet a Spaniard who will concede this point to me.” But such skepticism was too little too late; the lie was already too well established.42
In addition, dozens of conquistadors staked a personal, political investment in Montezuma’s alleged captivity by later claiming to have been his guard. Martín Vásquez was one, later known for hosting card games at his Mexico City house, where he lived with his Taíno wife. Another was Pedro Solís, a horseman in Sandoval’s cohort who claimed to have been head guard, as did Juan Velázquez. Francisco Flores later stated that he witnessed one of Montezuma’s surrender statements, and probably did guard duty; as did crossbowman Pedro López, one of the Noche Triste survivors who ate Martín de Gamboa’s horse after it was fatally wounded during the escape. Díaz claimed Cortés had López flogged when he complained about guard duty and referred to Montezuma as “a dog.” Díaz also wrote that another guard, named Trujillo, could not stop staring at the emperor; Montezuma gave him a gold nugget and asked him to stop, but when Trujillo still could not help himself, he was removed from the guard.43
In reality, the “guard” was a rotation of conquistadors who served as part of the emperor’s entourage, as indeed it must have looked to city residents who saw him going about his business. In other words, contingents of Caxtilteca became part of the imperial guard, protecting not detaining the huey tlahtoani. This enhanced the ruler’s prestige, while also giving him opportunities to study and learn more from the Caxtilteca; in return, he patronized them with attention and trinkets (jewelry and other items that conquistadors later bragged about). The prestige for a conquistador of having been “a guard of Montezuma’s” only increased in the years and decades after the war, as the legends of city (its wealth!) and captivity (his generosity!) blossomed. None had reason to admit—or even to choose to remember—that the captivity was a sham.
Despite all these reasons to misremember the past, however, surviving conquistadors did in fact reveal the reality of the Phoney Captivity in numerous ways. To start with, throughout the entire 235 days, neither Cortés nor any other Spaniard in Tenochtitlan wrote a letter or report to the king, or to anyone outside the city, detailing their supposed control of city and empire. Yet they claimed to have ink and paper—to notarize Montezuma’s surrender. The Aztecs had writing materials anyway. Moreover, scores of other documents have survived from the turbulent, violent years bracketing the Phoney Captivity.44
When, after the escape from the city, the survivors began to insist the dead emperor had surrendered and been seized, they nonetheless offered abundant details of life in a city where Montezuma had clearly continued to rule freely—details that are highly revealing for what they do and do not contain. The sum of all such descriptions, from Cortés’s own to those of Tapia and Aguilar to the testimonies given in lawsuits and investigations, give a powerful impression of a fully functioning city and ruling regime. Earlier historians conceded that Montezuma “was to all outward appearances free,” and recent ones have observed that, even in the canonical accounts by Cortés, Gómara, and Díaz, “Moctezuma is remarkably free”; he is “a man at liberty, at the center of an enormous household operating according to its familiar routines.” The putative prisoner, under “the guard” of up to half a dozen conquistadors at all times, nonetheless traveled at will to other palaces, to temples to make offerings, and to hunting grounds, moving around and outside the city with an entourage of “always at least three thousand men” (Cortés’s own admission). He “received ambassadors from distant lands” and envoys delivering tribute, “speaking publicly and privately” as he wished, “always with many lords and high-ranking people in his company.”45
Similarly, the markets continued as usual, as did religious festivals and rituals. All were mentioned by the conquistadors, anticipating the changes that would come—wealth appropriated by them, their religion imposed—while tacitly or explicitly acknowledging that no such changes had begun. Cortés claimed he made attempts to destroy and replace Aztec “idols,” but even he and Gómara admitted that “the moment was not fitting, nor did he have the force necessary to carry out his intent.”46
It is almost as if the Caxtilteca were ignored, even invisible. And while they must have stood out, they were a minuscule presence, confined much of the time to the massive Axayacatl palace complex. Recall that this was a city of some sixty thousand inhabitants—not the two hundred thousand or more that is often erroneously claimed, but with hundreds of thousands of additional residents in the myriad towns on the lakeshores. Many of those visited Tenochtitlan by day in order to work, deliver goods, and trade, swelling the city and helping to make it the noisy, smelly, bustling imperial capital that conquistadors remembered and described. As the Spaniards numbered no more than 250, they made up less than a quarter of 1 percent of the island-city’s daytime population.47
Yet, at the same time, for all the unwitting revelations of a city functioning freely and normally—not under new management—the descriptions by conquistadors lack a personal engagement with the Aztec population. We can sense the Spaniards’ avaricious amazement at the splendor of the imperial court and capital, and the paradox of the fear that tinged their boasts, but they remain curiously disconnected from individual Aztecs other than Montezuma and his close entourage. The real city of festivals and families is not visible or available to the conquistadors, a sign of their isolation as collected guests, as unwitting zoo specimens, of an emperor remote and inaccessible to ordinary Aztecs.
When Cortés left the city in May to confront the Narváez company sent by Velázquez, Montezuma did not send a contingent of warriors (only observers); he was, after all, still huey tlahtoani, and it was his decision where and when Aztec warriors fought. Cortés left with several of the leading captains and most of the men, leaving barely more than a hundred in Tenochtitlan. In his absence, the ambiguous arrangement of the Phoney Captivity slipped quickly into open warfare. In the traditional narrative, this is no coincidence: Cortés had consolidated the Surrender as a triumph of civilization over barbarism, but others then ruined it—the impetuous Alvarado, the villainous Velázquez and his agent Narváez, the pugnacious, superstitious Aztecs. But in fact, there were those on both sides who had been spoiling for a fight, for an end to Montezuma’s collection experiment.
THREE THINGS HAPPENED IN MAY. We cannot be sure of their sequence, of their precise relationship of cause and effect, but they all seem well evidenced enough and all had an
exacerbating (if not causative) effect on the others. One was the celebration of Toxcatl. The Spaniards had arrived during Quecholli, and stayed long enough to witness eight more Aztec months with their festivals: tribute was delivered on two of them, and ritual executions (“human sacrifices”) took place during most, although if Montezuma or anyone in his government had planned to execute the Caxtilteca during Tlacaxipehualiztli (as I suggested earlier), such a ritual usage of the emperor’s guests never occurred. But perhaps such a plan was intended for Toxcatl, the ninth festival since the Meeting; that at least was what Pedro de Alvarado later claimed he was told.48
May’s second happening was war—open, punishing urban warfare between the Aztecs and the Caxtilteca. The latter had the advantage only for the opening hours of the conflict, when they waded through unarmed festival celebrants, slaughtering and dismembering with their swords. After that, being massively outnumbered, they holed up for weeks in Axayacatl’s palace.
The third thing that happened was that Montezuma seems finally to have been seized, along with every high-ranking royal and noble member of his government. The emperor whom Cortés was not allowed to touch at the Meeting, who had surely remained untouched since then—free and in command of his government—was now shown the indignity of being shackled.
Let us turn to a perspective on these three happenings from Tlatelolco, written down in Nahuatl in the mid-sixteenth century. An annals, or a record of yearly events, from this sibling altepetl to Tenochtitlan included a twelve-page account of the invasion war. The first year is covered very briefly in half a page, and then Cortés, here called the Captain,
When Montezuma Met Cortes Page 26
