The Curse of Cortés

Any military occupation that directly or indirectly caused the deaths, in less than a century, of 90 percent of the population is hardly one to celebrate. It is true that Aztec civilization continues to be seen as a particularly bloodthirsty one, but the general assessment of it has also become more sophisticated. If Cervantes a knowledgeable dissident in his time lived today, he would recognize Cortés as a genocidal killer and would not define Tenochtitlan as a fright but as a triumph of environmentally sound engineering whose inhabitants suffered from a worrying tendency to make violent death into a performance.

via getpocket.com

I think “fright” is if anything understated. Evidently, on their big feast days, literally tens of thousands of mostly war prisoners and their families were marched up those big pyramids and then discardicarized (?) and dismembered before they were discarded down the slope of the pyramid. You quickly had enormous piles of limbs and organs and many gallons of blood. Reportedly the smell was overpowering, as it would be, making the entire city uninhabitable to the even the remotely squeamish. This came after they were ritually sexually abused for weeks and weeks in various one might say perverse ways. The prisoners were probably glad to get their lives over with. I suppose “environmentally sound engineering” refers to how the Aztecs disposed of the bodies, as the Nazis disposed of the Jews? The only thing that stopped the Aztecs from being guilty of complete genocide was their desire to keep enough slaves alive so that they had plenty of people to kill next time around. Whether that’s better or worse, I’m not sure. Probably worse. Cortes was no bargain, I’m sure, but his desire to exterminate this culture with “a worrying tendency to make violent death into a performance” is understandable, even if it meant being a genocidal killer himself.