The Conquest of Mexico

I ANCIENT MEXICO

1 Harmony and order
2 Palace of the white sedges
3 I see misforutne come
4 Now with love but with fear

II SPAIN OF THE GOLDEN AGE

5 The golden years begin
6 The Pope must have been drunk
7 Better lands have never been discovered
8 What I saw was so splendid
9 A great Lord born in brocade
10 Sweating, hunger and hard work

III TO KNOW THE SECRETS OF THE LAND

11 A gentlemanly pirate
12 The advantage of having horse and cannon
13 As much as has where Solomon took the gold for the
temple
14 A dragon’s head for a “Florentine” glass
15 They received him with trumpets
16 If I continue, shall I win?
17 To leave none of us alive
18 This cruelty restored order
19 Another new world of great cities and towers

IV CORTÉS AND MONTEZUMA

20 An image of Quetzalcoatl
21 Bees and spiders make works of art
22 Something must be done for the Lord

V CORTÉS PLANS UNDONE

23 The King, our lord, is more King than other Kings
24 A voice very deep and hoarse as if it came from a vault
25 To cut off Don Hernando’s ear
26 The blood of the chieftains ran like water
27 As a song you were born, Montezuma
28 Fortune spins her wheel

VI THE SPANISH RECOVERY

29 The sweetness of death by the obsidian knife
30 It was convenient to impose the said punishment
31 My principal intention and motive in making this war
32 They were all lords

VII THE BATTLE FOR TENOCHTITLAN

33 Remember the bold hearts
34 A great harvest of captives
35 Such mad dogs

VIII AFTERMATH

36 The general exodus
37 The songs and voices scarcely ceased
38 The clause in Adam’s will which excludes France
39 An absolute monarch

Author context

1931-2017, English
Cambridge educated
Father was officer in British colonial army
Became famous after publishing “The Spanish Civil War“ in 1961
Ran unsuccesfully as Labor MP twice - “Thereafter, if not in consequence, he publicly declared his abandonment of the Labour party and his embrace of Thatcherite free-market economics. He became one of Margaret Thatcher’s unofficial advisers and was made chairman of her thinktank, the Centre for Policy Studies” (source)

Notes

More a story about the European desire for power

[Cortes] even told Montezuma that they together would soon set about conquering a bigger empire than the present Mexican one . . . why should not Montezuma’s army, with Cortes’ weapons, conquer China - which everyone believed to be near at hand” (Thomas 324)

“Cortes also told these Mexican lords that, since they were now vassal of King Charles, they ought to complete the process of transformation and become Christians. [The] emperor seems to have decided tactfully and not tactically too, that he would like to wait till Easter” (Thomas 324)

INDEX

Mexico
Colonialism
Spain
Catholicism
Langston Hughes

Yanga, Mexico

REFS

The Spanish Civil War
The Slave Trade
The Tropics of Empire

Mexican Churches
Circa 1492
The Mexican National Museum of Anthropology

SITES, WORKS

Langston Hughes, "In a Mexican City" (1921)