Ray: History is a reconstruction, a novel. Always ideologized. I won't argue because, unfortunately, I have no time and because I don´t need to convince anyone about my points of view in this particular matter. Besides, I won't convince you, who are part of the Indian people because in the contruction of your identity -as a group- you have to justify the defeats, as well as any other human group does. "They crushed us, but they are stupids", "We were almost perfect people until the stranger came and spoiled us". Even the recounts are questionable, as you said regarding the amount of people sacrificed by the aztec priests. Of course the conquest was brutal, as any war is (what about your boys in Afganisthan and Iraq?, What about Vietnam?), but the defeat of the aztecs was not due to the superiority of the spaniards but to the help of tlaxcaltecas and other indian groups, tired of the oppresion and barbarity of the aztecs. Besides, spaniards coming with Hernan Cortes were soldiers, not intellectuals; they surely could not read (but some could write very good, as Bernal Diaz del Castillo, the "historian" of the spaniard side of the conflict), but I haven't heard about the libraries you talk about. Now is very well documented, by mexican historians, the poorness of the aztec culture. Part of the conquest was the presence of franciscans, jesuits and other missioners, don't forget them. I do not idealize aztecs or any other indian group. That´s part of the dominant ideology, to have a glorious past in lack of a decent present. The fact is that right today some mexican indigenous groups, that fight for the preservation of their own rules and regulations, do things like like selling daughters. If it was such a developed and refined culture, why they didn't keep the best of their manners and customs and took the best of what Occident had to offer? I am not against aztecs or any other ethnic group. But I don't swallow the official history nor I think that the aztecs (in case you can find one, what´s is not easy, because we all are mexicans) deserve any special treatment, different from any other person. I also do not accept as a justification for any failure today what happened 400 years ago (but I recognize the profitability of crying, the negotiation potencial of playing with guilt). Too much time, don't you think so? I don´t think that any of my limitations is justificable in terms of the roman invasión or the musslim presence in Spain. On the contrary. You say "Cortez was a pig a brute and he destroyed a world center with disease and barbaric brutality". It's OK for me if you think so (as do many americans whose source of information is the novel Aztec). It must be relevant to you to see him this way. As I said, for me he is a great man, one of the figures that you need to know to fully understand Renaissance, and excellent example of what a warrior had to be in his time. From my point of view, considering his lights and shadows, he is an authentic hero. Salvador
> Salvador, > > I would never suggest to you that I know more about where you live than you > do, however, just as Chris and Keith propose some disturbing scenarios about > the US with little actual experience here I would say the same about the > Aztecs. Decadent is not a term I would describe for a group so young in > their society. > > Huitchilopochtli was an adolescent God not a decadent one. His was the God > of the rage and certainty of the young culture that makes mistakes. All > cultures including America, the Soviet Union and others have done no less. > In fact it is my work as an opera director that has drawn me to these > conclusions. The sheer numbers killed in battles in Europe are > overwhelming for not so large populations. While the human sacrifice in > Tenochtitlan was one a day per temple. The Europeans proposed that there > were festivals where ten thousand captives were slaughtered. Just think > about that. Blood is slippery. Those steps are narrow and high. How > many priests would it take killing one person at a time taking out their > beating heart and doing the ritual to accomplish ten thousand? That is > romance and stupid besides. Remember the Spaniards were enamored of > numbers and had just learned the Arabic numerals from robbing the Moorish > libraries. It makes no sense. In fact the scenario is impossible. > Six thousand deaths when the soldiers destroyed the Smallpox sick warriors > ran the streets in blood several inches deep. Such a scene of carnage > would in a couple of days destroyed the city if they did it just for > religious holidays. > > Better to read the accounts of the Spanish on Hispanola where they fed > Indian babies to their hunting dogs and cooked the Indian patriots for food > for their animals. In one hundred years they reduced and Island population > of 8 million to 100. > > You didn't screw around with the Aztecs, they had the brutality of the young > and when they were "crossed" as with the prior people who inhabited their > Island they wiped them from the earth. But they were farmers who rose > to become great writers, artists and scholars in a very short time. If > time had allowed they would also have grown more temperate as all people's > do but that was not allowed. But decadent is the wrong word. > > Aztec battles were not fought for blood but for captives although they were > terminal. The armor was paper. The wooden swords were edged with > obsidian glass. They were the root of the surgical techniques developed by > the Aztecs for the healing of wounds that we use today in eye surgery. > Such precision was necessary with Indian people because unlike Europeans we > suffer Cheloid scars that can destroy our lives if the knives are rough as > in swords. Knowing all of the data is important if you are to uncover the > truth beneath the historic distortions. These are just afew of the little > things. There are also big things like the agriculture, the schooling, the > handling of children recorded by even the enemy priests who hated them, and > the amazing recycling process for sewage that made it possible for a large > population to live in an inclosed environment. Don't just look at their > gargoyles without knowing the artistic style or the myths. The educational > theory is impressive even today and the awareness of the importance of > self-sacrifice in human discipline is simply realistic even if it was taken > to a fundamentalist idiotic extreme. We don't blame the Elizbethans for > their idiocies we admire Shakespeare and Dickens can tell you about when the > Thames ran brown from sewage that only the fires of London extinguished. > > The Europeans surrounded the reason for their destructiveness with ample > excuses but that is propaganda and to be taken in by it at this time is not > logical. Cortez was a pig a brute and he destroyed a world center with > disease and barbaric brutality. He burned the libraries and destroyed the > culture and burned the feet off of Cauhtemoc in a vain pursuit of treasure > until the old Tlamatanime had to crawl across Mexico on stubs telling the > people that the books were being destroyed and they must hide them in the > churches and in their hearts. Today the old codexs extant are found by > post conquest Aztec scholars and artists in the Vatican. And there are > less than thirty out of thousands of volumes. In my little apartment I > have six thousand books. That is not a big library. The library of hand > painted texts an Tenochtitlan was said to be immense. For the Mayans > there are only three books out of whole libraries. > > The point is that we Indian people are fighting for our culture and our > lives and the old stores still come back to haunt us. If Hitler had won > the war he would have been known as the hero that Cortez is today. We do > not preach romance but cold hard truth and logic. We admit the religious > fundamentalism and its brutality but we also admit the glory and grace and > awareness of the meaning of life that has escaped those who raped, pillaged > and destroyed the crops and soil of Mexico with their wheels and hooves. > > Where are the great gardens? Where are the great libraries the arts, the > exceptional beauty that was remarked by the European artists before the > melted down the sculptures for the gold? What about the feather art which > was equal to European painting? Just a few examples in the museums here. > When you see the exceptional work it is amazing. So as an opera director > when I read things like priests never washing in a culture that valued > cleanliness and I have the medical knowledge of bacteria, common sense > betrays the texts. It was the Europeans who carried the germs and who > didn't was, not the reverse. Anything else is just hokum. > > Sorry, no disrespect meant, it is your country. I just ask questions from > a distance and I cannot go around one of those sites of carnage without > becoming sick myself. Even when I don't know they are there and wander > into one, I come down with a flu-like illness that takes several days for me > to recover. It makes travel sometimes very difficult. The point is not to > be romantic but to ask questions, seek the truth always and be coldly > logical subject to revision when new data comes to light. That is all that > I am trying to do. My data comes from doing art works about that time and > from my teaching our children about our culture and the interconnections > that our people here had with the mound culture of Mexico. We too are > people of the Sacred Fire and Mound. We are often asked to forgive the > Christian culture its excesses for the ideals. All we ask is the same type > of compassion and care for the great advances that we too achieved in our > time prior to the bringing of disease and pestilence that killed 92 out of > every 100 people who lived here. > > REH _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
