Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why was it believed that the Aztecs greeted Cortés as a deity?

laphamsquarterly.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 104 posts

Re: Why was it believed that the Aztecs greeted Cortés as a deity?

#61

Post by wayoutthere »

saiya-jin wrote: post #32
werpon wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spaniard here. I don't think I've ever read or heard a sugarcoated version of the conquest. In fact it's usually the opposite. October 12 is indeed the day Columbus set foot on the New World and also our national holiday, but I fail to see how it's different from other holidays such as Thanksgiving.

I would be really surprised if you actually got raw version of history as it happened at school. Very few countries actually admit properly their past mistakes (Germany and WWII might be rather an exception). Raw version would be somewhere along the lines of "our ancestors were among the most horrible arrogant ignorant humans that ever lived if measured by the amount of evil done unto the others, and we are deeply as…

I'm not saying this excuses anything, but the conquistadors looked at the natives more like smart apes than humans. They literally thought it was their God-given right to hold dominion over the earth and all the animals on it. This level of self-reflection was just not possible at the time (the age of conquest was contemporary with the Spanish Inquisition).

Re: Why was it believed that the Aztecs greeted Cortés as a deity?

#62

Post by TurkishPoptart »

nestorD wrote: post #9

My understanding, after reading the memoir of Bernal diaz Del Castillo[0] (who was an eye witness of the conquest of Mexico), is that it was Montezuma II who purposefully spread rumors saying that the conquistador were returning gods so that people would stop fighting them and start trading with them. It was not superstitious belief from ignorant savages, it was a political move. [0]: which I highly recommend, they a…

It's like 400 pages! Can you recommend an excerpt?

Re: Why was it believed that the Aztecs greeted Cortés as a deity?

#63

Post by hindsightbias »

willvarfar wrote: post #29
lentil_soup wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Thanksgiving is comparable. Spain celebrating the 12th of October as its national day is as if England celebrated Thanksgiving as its own national day.

I don't understand why Thanksgiving is celebrated at all. Its a bunch of religious bigots who left England for Holland because England was too religiously tolerant. They then had to leave Holland because they felt threatened by the fact that their children didn't want to continue their religion and were 'going native'. So they head off to the English colonies in America where they settle land cleared of native Indian…

They "founded" America and their values persist into modern day in one form or another. We will always have a puritan(ical) streak.

Re: Why was it believed that the Aztecs greeted Cortés as a deity?

#64

Post by DanielBMarkham »

wayoutthere wrote: post #52
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a fascinating story for reasons that have nothing to do with the Spanish or Aztecs. This is a story about technology and the internet; also it's about how history cycles. The Spanish were probably a poor reporter of the conditions they encountered. Even if they had tried to be completely objective, they would have had a very difficult time explaining what they saw without a lot of context they didn't have. I…

It's the same pathos vs logos argument that has been well documented over the last 3000+ years. Emotion and logic have always been at odds.

Related trivia: logos initially meant story or account, as opposed to how it later evolved. So we're back to history again.

Re: Why was it believed that the Aztecs greeted Cortés as a deity?

#65

Post by thoughtleader31 »

darkwater wrote: post #58
spanxx wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another victim of Black Legend...

Please enlighten me

The Spanish try to whitewash their atrocities by speaking of a purposeful campaign of defamation from rival powers.

So successful it was, apparently, that it made disctinct stories of Spanish brutality materialize in every country in the Americas.

The legend of the Black Legend also emphasizes the enlightenment of the Crown's laws regarding the legal status and treatment of indigenous peoples.

Unfortunately the rumors spread by the English about the treatment of natives were so convincing, that the Spanish conquistadors and encomenderos also came to believe that they had the right to enslave the indians and create a racial caste system where mestizos would live as serfs for centuries.

Or maybe it just was that the laws were never effectively enforced.

Re: Why was it believed that the Aztecs greeted Cortés as a deity?

#66

Post by trevyn »

For the same reason why children who have a near-death experience sometimes report the “white light” as “meeting Santa Claus.”

An encounter occurred between people with vastly different levels of technology and ability, and it was contextualized in the most comprehensible way.

Re: Why was it believed that the Aztecs greeted Cortés as a deity?

#67

Post by lacker »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #30
nestorD wrote: post #9

My understanding, after reading the memoir of Bernal diaz Del Castillo[0] (who was an eye witness of the conquest of Mexico), is that it was Montezuma II who purposefully spread rumors saying that the conquistador were returning gods so that people would stop fighting them and start trading with them. It was not superstitious belief from ignorant savages, it was a political move. [0]: which I highly recommend, they a…

> My understanding, after reading the memoir of Bernal diaz Del Castillo[0] (who was an eye witness of the conquest of Mexico) Diaz's account was written 50 years after it had happened and is generally considered by modern scholars to be of dubious accuracy and primarily intended as a self-serving defense of his own wealth later in life. As Adorno writes, "At issue were not the wars long since won or lost but rather…

Diaz's account is entirely intended as a defense of his own actions. But he isn't trying to defend himself according to modern standards, at all! He admits that the conquistadors slaughtered non-military people for all sorts of reasons, took women as "wives" from conquered people, killed people just for believing in a different religion, lied and backstabbed, stole any valuables they could find. Everything we criticize the conquistadors for today, Bernal Diaz isn't even trying to defend.

What he spends all this time defending against is accusations that Cortes broke the rules of the Spanish monarchy, and that some other conquistador is actually the one who had the right to plunder the Aztec empire. Nobody really cares about that nowadays.

Also - it's pretty clear from Diaz's accounts that the Aztecs did not treat them like gods. There are a couple characters at some point who think they are some sort of monster because they haven't seen people on horseback before. But for the vast majority of the account, the conquistadors are explaining to the locals that they are warriors who serve a king that lives across the ocean, and the locals understand that.

Re: Why was it believed that the Aztecs greeted Cortés as a deity?

#68

Post by spanxx »

thoughtleader31 wrote: post #65
darkwater wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please enlighten me

The Spanish try to whitewash their atrocities by speaking of a purposeful campaign of defamation from rival powers. So successful it was, apparently, that it made disctinct stories of Spanish brutality materialize in every country in the Americas. The legend of the Black Legend also emphasizes the enlightenment of the Crown's laws regarding the legal status and treatment of indigenous peoples. Unfortunately the rumor…

Not true at all. English made propaganda about supposed atrocities and that propaganda is alive today: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_legend

Re: Why was it believed that the Aztecs greeted Cortés as a deity?

#70

Post by spanxx »

Svip wrote: post #2

Because it makes the Conquistadors' conquests of the New World seem more appetising? Because it downplays the indiscriminate conquering of the Americas? Spain commemorates the day Columbus discovered America as its national day, as it ushered in a golden age for Spain, which is true enough. But with the atrocities inflicted by Spain (along with the other European powers) on the natives in the New World, it may have b…

Do you really think that a hundred of undisciplined soldiers could fight and won a war against an empire? Spanish conquerors were lucky that Aztecs were hated by other natives and allied them.

It was more like a civil war than a conquest.

Post reply on HN