Blaming Moctezuma: Anthropomorphizing the Aztec Conquest

October 02, 2003,
University of Florida,
Fine Arts B Room 103
Time: 5:10

Lecture Summary:

The Aztec Conquest is often depicted as a contest of the political wills and skills of two towering historical figures Cortés and Moctezuma. Spanish victory is often attributed to Cortés's political acumen and luck. Correspondingly, the blame for the Aztec loss has fallen heavily upon Moctezuma. Significantly, the "blaming Monteczuma" phenomenon is not solely a product of European notions of political history, but was already fully developed by the latter half of the 16th century, revealed in documents that record Aztec historical traditions and in the paintings that accompany them. This presentation discusses the blaming of Moctezuma as part of the subsequent mythologizing of the Conquest, one of the processes of resistance and accommodation following the imposition of Spanish colonialism. Emphasis is given to the omens of impending defeat that were said to have terrified Moctezuma. In hindsight the invention of these omens as "imagined nonevents" became critical to colonial Aztec understandings of their defeat, but they were insignificant to European representations of the Conquest that emphasize Cortés's actions. Furthermore, the blaming of Moctezuma provides important clues to a larger phenomenon: the "anthropomorphization" of the state in Aztec worldview. The semi-divine person of Moctezuma represented the Aztec domain, just as Cortés, in Aztec eyes, represented the Spanish "state". Hence, the interactions of these two men were paramount events that became the focus of both 16th -century indigenous and later European-influenced renderings of the Conquest of Mexico, although for different reasons.