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———. 2011. “Competing Memories of the Conquest of Mexico.” In Ilona Katzew, ed., Contested Visions in the Spanish Colonial World. Los Angeles and New Haven: LACMA and Yale University Press, 54–77.
Thomas, Hugh. 1992. The Real Discovery of America: Mexico, November 8, 1519. Pamphlet. Mount Kisco, NY: Moyer Bell.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY OF REFERENCES: SECONDARY SOURCES IN ALTERNATIVE MEDIA (FILM, ANIMATION, LYRICS, OR LIBRETTO TO MUSIC, GRAPHIC BOOK)
Abnett, Dan. 2007. Hernán Cortés and the Fall of the Aztec Empire. Jr. Graphic Biographies. New York: PowerKids Press.
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Ferrer, Oriol (director). 2015. Carlos, Rey Emperador. Television drama series (produced by Diagonal TV for RTVE, Spain).
Sessions, Roger (music) and G. Antonio Borgese (libretto). 1965. Montezuma: Opera in Three Acts. (First performance 1964, Berlin.) New York: Marks Music Corporation.
Spontini, Gaspare. 1809. Fernand Cortez. Opéra (Arrangé pour le Piano). Paris: Imbault. [In LML-H.]
Vivaldi, Antonio. 1733. Motezuma: Drama Per Musica. Venice: Marino Rossetti. [Libretto by Girolamo Alvise Giusti, transcription available online at librettidopera.it/zpdf/motezuma.]
Young, Neil (writer and recording artist). 1975. “Cortez the Killer.” Song first released on the LP, Neil Young and Crazy Horse, Zuma (Reprise Records).
Zanuck, Darryl F. (producer) and Henry King (director). 1947. Captain from Castile. Twentieth Century Fox feature film (based on the first half of the 1945 novel by Samuel Shellabarger).
Notes
PREFACE
1.Solís (1724; preface and translation by Thomas Townsend).
PROLOGUE: INVENTION
1.Epigraph sources, in sequence: Díaz (1632: unnumbered prefatory f. 4v); Dryden (1668 [1667]: unnumbered prefatory, p. 26); words spoken by Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey (Austen 1818, but originally written 1798–99; also used as opening epigraph by Carr 1961: 6).
2.Díaz (1632: unnumbered prefatory material, p. ii) (original phrases: el Capitan Conquistador; testigo ocular; testigo de vista) (also 1908, I: 3; 2005, I: 3); Fuentes (1928–2012) wrote variously on Díaz, ranging from (1990: 72–77) to (2011: 25–44). Also see comments by Guillermo Serés, editor of an exhaustive 1,620-page scholarly edition of the book (Díaz 2012), who calls it “the greatest Spanish prose of the sixteenth century [la mejor prosa castellana del siglo XVI]” (Serés 2013).
3.“A Conqueror Captures a King” facing this Prologue’s title page: The two Mercedarians were fray Alonso Remón (the editor) and fray Bartolomé de Olmedo (portrayed here). Few subsequent editions of the book reproduce or discuss this title page imagery. It is not included, for example, in Díaz (1963), (1984), or (2008); it is reproduced in Delgado-Gomez (1992: 20), Restall (2003: 138), and Díaz (2005, II: 111), for example, but not fully discussed.
4.863-page book: There are two surviving versions of Díaz’s book: the “Guatemala Manuscript” of the 1580s comprises 863 handwritten pages (Díaz 2005); the 1632 printed edition is 508 pages (Díaz 1632; 2005; Carrasco in Díaz 2008: xxvi). “On occasion”: Thomas in Díaz (2003: xi). Miralles (2008). “Flashbacks”: Duverger (2013: 17). While I am not persuaded that Cortés wrote the True History, Duverger’s skepticism regarding Díaz’s authorial role deserves to be taken seriously; indeed, I suspect that the original nonextant manuscript was a compilation of accounts and testimonies by multiple witnesses, lent coherence by the hand of an editor (or editors).
5.Newspaper reviews as blurbs to Díaz (2003), also quoted by Carrasco in Díaz (2008: xv). “Historians explain”: Menand (2015: 73). For fascinating fact/fiction accounts of the Aztec and conquistado
r past, written by a novelist as “history” for children and young adults, see Frías (1899–1901) (also Bonilla Reyna and Lecouvey 2015).
6.“Every good mystery”: Sue Grafton, speaking through her Kinsey Millhone character, in W Is for Wasted (New York: G. P. Putnam, 2013: 3) (not in my Bibliography); I have elided the sentence between “sleuth” and “figures.” Testigo ocular: In Díaz’s day, eyewitness reports were by definition accurate (the “Renaissance obsession . . . that eyewitness accounts were almost incontrovertibly true”; Goodwin 2015: 84), a perception that persisted into the modern era of video footage and DNA and—paradoxically—deep skepticism over the very concept of objectivity (this is a much-studied topic, but for one engaging foray into it, see Fernández-Armesto 1997: 82–102). For discussion of Díaz’s own insistence that his eyewitness status trumped the learning of official historians, see Adorno (1992). For a modern example of the view that eyewitness conquistadors like Díaz and Aguilar wrote “pure truth” (la verdad pura) with “deep subjectivity” (subjetividad profunda), see Vásquez (1991: 11). For Díaz in the context of the early modern Spanish “soldierly republic of letters,” see Martínez (2016).
7.“Modern history”: Brooks (1995: 149). “Real discovery”: Thomas uses the “real discovery” phrase several times (e.g., 1992).
8.Such correspondence came mostly in response to three books (Restall 1998; Res tall 2003; and Restall and Solari 2011; along with non-English editions of the 2003 and 2011 books). This present book in part builds upon the 2003 volume, further exploring some of its themes and ideas, correcting arguments where the evidence has now led me to different conclusions, and with exclusive attention to the case study of central Mexico. This present book has implications for the study of the Spanish Conquest elsewhere, and I plan to follow it with another book on the Spanish-Maya wars of invasion and conquest; but in the interests of space and focus, I leave it to others to make other connections across the Americas.
9.In sequence: Day (2008: 4); Krauze (2010: 66) (Cómo pudo un pequeño ejército de cientos de soldados castellanos doblegar a millones de mexicas y a su ponderosa teocracia militar? Éste ha sido uno de los grandes misterios de la historia); Wright (1993: 19; also quoted by Day); Keegan (1993: 338–39).
10.Clendinnen (1991b: 65 [2010 reprint: 49]).
11.Ballentine in Ixtlilxochitl (1969: ix).
PART I
1.Epigraph sources, in sequence: Bacon (1973 [1612]: 158); Paz quoted by Krauze (2010: 73) (El mito nació de la ideología y solo la crítica a la ideología podrá disiparlo).
CHAPTER 1: MYSTERIOUS KINDNESS
1.Epigraph sources, in sequence: Cortés’s Letters, hereafter cited as CCR (1522: f. 10v; 1960: 52; 1971: 86) (no creais mas de lo que por vuestros ojos veredes); Rowdon (1974: 122); Abbott (1904 [1856]: unnumbered p. 7; italics in original); Tuchman (1981 [1964]: 25); Fernández-Armesto (2014: xxi). Although I cite various published editions of Cortés’s letters for the reader’s convenience, all translations from Cortés’s Second Letter are mine, made from the original texts in the 1522 Seville edition and the 1528 manuscript in Codex Vindobonensis, SN1600, ONB (also Cortés 1960 [1519–25]).
2.“Amazed”: Aguilar (c.1560, in J. Díaz et al. 1988: 176 and Fuentes 1963: 145) testifying as to what Ordaz told him (otro nuevo mundo de grandes poblaciones y torres, y una mar, y dentro de ella una ciudad muy grande edificada; venia espantado de lo que habia visto; que a la verdad al parecer, ponia temor y espanto). Note that I have varied my gloss of terms like grande and espanto, to better convey this opening point; but conquistadors like Aguilar used a limited vocabulary, and generally my translations more closely follow the original text. “Real”: Díaz LXXXVII (1632: f. 64v; 1910, II: 37; 2008 [1632]: 157) (q si aquello q veian, si era entre sueños). “Enchantment”: Cano in Martínez Baracs (2006: 50, 151–52) (les parecía cosa de encantamiento y que no podían creer que fuese verdad sino que lo soñaban las cosas de México). Note that the “enchantment” phrase was also used by Díaz (and oft quoted as such), but he either borrowed it from Cano or, more likely, it was widely used by the conquistadors (whose imaginations were limited). “So wondrous”: CCR (1522: f. 12v; 1971 [1519–25]: 101–2; 1993 [1519–25]: 232) (seran de tanta admiracion que no se podran creer . . . la grandeza, estrañas y maravillosas cosas desta grand cibdad de Temixtitan . . . los que aca con nuestros proprios ojos las veemos no las podemos con el entendimiento comprehender).
3.FC, XII: f. 22; Lockhart (1993: 108). This description is from Book XII of the Florentine Codex, a manuscript revisited and discussed in detail in subsequent chapters. The suggestion in this passage that the demeanors of the conquistadors and their dogs were similar is surely deliberate; it is omitted from the parallel Spanish version (op. cit.: 109).
4.Population: Rojas (2012: 50–54, 88–90); Evans (2013: 549); Luna (2014). Alonso de Zuazo reported from Cuba in 1521 that Tenochtitlan had 60,000 people and Tetzcoco twice that many (CDHM, I: 366). The figure of 60,000 was commonly cited in the sixteenth century, although sometimes as houses (e.g., sesenta mil casas; Jeronymo Girava Tarragonez in Apiano 1575: app. p. x), encouraging exaggerated population estimates by modern scholars. The Anonymous Conquistador asserted that “most people who have seen the great city of Temistitan Mexico judge it to have sixty thousand inhabitants” (a reference to Mexico City c.1550, although often mistakenly read as referring to the pre-Conquest city); in fact, the almost fourteen square kilometers of Tenochtitlan probably did contain sixty to eighty thousand inhabitants in 1519 (and perhaps too in 1550) (CDHM, I: 391). No levels above the ground floor were residential in the Aztec city, so it could not possibly have been more densely populated than modern Manhattan; thus older claims that Tenochtitlan had half a million or even a million residents (e.g., from Abbott 1904 [1856]: 187 to Soustelle 1964: 31–32 and Vaillant 1966: 134) cannot be taken seriously, as Evans points out (2013: 549). “Anthills”: Mendieta (1870 [1596]: 175) (tanto número de gente indiana, que los pueblos y caminos en lo mas de ellos no parecian sino hormigueros, cosa de admiración á quien lo veia y que debiera poner terrible terror á tan pocos españoles como los que Cortés consigo traia).
5.CCR (1522: f. 16v–17r; 1971 [1519–25]: 102–3, 105; 1993 [1519–25]: 233–34, 238) (es tan grande la cibdad como Sevilla y Cordoba . . . la mas prencipal es mas alta que la torre de la iglesia mayor de Sevilla . . . tan grande como dos veces la plaza de la cibdad de Salamanca) (note that “la plaza de” is missing from the 1522 and 1523 editions and 1528 MS, but included in the Madrid MS; see 1993: 234n275). The comparisons of Tenochtitlan’s plaza to that of Salamanca, the towers of its “mosques” to Granada, and its overall size to Seville and Córdoba, were repeated through the sixteenth century (e.g., Fernández de Oviedo 1959 [1535], IV: 44–45 [Ch. X]).
6.Included in my Bibliography as Anonymous (1522), the newsletter’s full title was Newe Zeitung, von dem Lande, das die Spanier funden haben ym 1521 Iare genant Jucatan; the quotes above and in the caption to the figure on p. 2 are from unnumbered pp. 5–6; translation mine, but indebted to Wagner (1929: 200), and to Wolfgang Gabbert, personal communication, January 2014. A similar account was also published in Basel—but in Latin—in 1521 by Peter Martyr d’Anghiera (De nuper sub D. Carolo repertis insulis).
7.My translation from the Spanish version by Bustamante (1986: 178) (Esta ciudad es maravillosa por su tamaño, situación y artificios, puesta en mitad de un lago de . . . [etc.]). Tenochtitlan was understandably a popular topic of fascination in Venice, featured in publications such as Benedetto Bordone’s Isolario, a guide to all the world’s islands, first published in Venice in 1528 (see Gruzinski 2014: 55 and the works he cites).
8.CCR (1522: title page/frontispiece) (haze relacio[n] de una gra[n]dissima provi[n]cia muy rica llamada Culua: e[n] la q[ua]l ay muy gra[n] des cuidades y de maravillosos edificios: y de gra[n]des tratos y riq[ue]zas. Entre las q[ua]les ay una mas maravillosa y rica q[ue] todas llamada Timixtita[n]); see the image (first page of the Gallery) for the original text. T
he “urtext” quote is by Adorno (2011: 43). The title begins Carta de relacio[n] e[n]biada a su S. majestad del e[m]perador n[uest]ro señor por el capita[n] general de la nueva [e]spaña: llamado ferna[n]do cortes (“Letter of report sent to His Majesty the Emperor our Lord by the Captain General of New Spain, named Fernando Cortés”). For other early Spanish descriptions of the city, see Gómara (1552: ff. 45v–49r; 1964: 156–67) (an author and book further discussed in the chapters to come). The theme of Tenochtitlan as a lost wonder persisted through the chronicles and histories of sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, with William Robertson somewhat begrudgingly accepting the theme’s legacy; he chose not to compare the Aztec city to European ones, but did note that its construction was “remarkable,” that the palaces of kings and nobles “might be termed magnificent”—compared to “any other buildings which had been discovered in America”—and that the city was “the pride of the New World, and the noblest monument of the industry and art of man, while unacquainted with the use of iron, and destitute of aid from any domestic animal” (1777, II: 54–55).
9.A 1524 Antwerp edition of the Second Letter likely also included the map, but no copy of that edition has survived (Pagden in CCR 1971 [1519–25]: lx).
10.“Azure lake” and “geometries”: Mundy (1998: 11, 16). There have been about a dozen studies of the Nuremberg Map, of varying length and depth, published since the 1930s (see the historiographical summary in Boone 2011: 42n1), but three recent articles represent the map’s authoritative studies to date: Mundy (1998; an abbreviated version is Mundy 2011b); Matos Moctezuma (2001); and Boone (2011). In Boone’s words (op. cit.: 38), the map “presents Tenochtitlan as belonging to two temporalities”; in Mundy’s (1998: 26), it is “stretched like a taut rope between Cortés’s ideological programme and that of its Culhua-Mexica [Aztec] prototype.” The possible connection to the Nuremberg Chronicle is suggested by Schreffler (2011: 257–62). For discussion of the map in the context of early European maps of “Indian” cities and understandings of indigenous barbarism, see Davies (2016: 227–30, Ch. 7).
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