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Judi Lynn

(160,211 posts)
Thu Aug 12, 2021, 08:51 PM Aug 2021

Mexico marks 500 years since Aztec's capital's fall with public spectacles, political rancor and har

Mexico marks 500 years since Aztec’s capital’s fall with public spectacles, political rancor and hard words for Spain

Hernan Cortes’s destruction of Tenochtitlan in 1521 ended an empire and paved the way for the Mexico we know today. Now the president, his opponents and Indigenous people are struggling for control of the story

DAVID AGREN
MEXICO CITY
THE GLOBE AND MAIL
PUBLISHED 9 MINUTES AGO
UPDATED AUGUST 12, 2021



Dancers perform at Mexico City's central Zócalo square this past July to mark the
of the founding of Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec empire that Hernán Cortés
conquered for Spain in the 1520s.

LUIS CORTES/REUTERS

Legend has it Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes wept under a Moctezuma cypress tree after the Mexica drove him from their island capital in 1520. He cried for his lost men – reputedly weighed down by gold and slain as they fled over a causeway – and for the Indigenous people who had fought alongside him.

The debacle became known as the “Night of Sorrows.” It preceded his return the next year, when Cortes and his allies overthrew tMhe Aztec empire and conquered Tenochtitlan, which would become Mexico City.

To mark this year’s 500th anniversary of Tenochtitlan’s fall, the Mexico City government renamed the plaza containing the cypress stump “Plaza of the Victorious Night” – an attempt to “give voice to the original peoples of our territory,” according to Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum.

“If we say the night of sorrows, we think of Cortes and the conquest,” Ms. Sheinbaum said at the ceremony. “If we say victorious night, we honour those who died in the massacre at the Templo Mayor and the population of Tenochtitlan.”

Critics panned the renaming as political – same as they did for the national government celebrating the 700-year anniversary of the founding of Tenochtitlan, a date historians consider dubious. The episode has underscored the enduring controversy of the conquest, an event that produced many of the country’s foundational myths. Hispanophiles cling to notions of Cortes and the Spanish bringing civilization, religion and language to Mexico. Indigenous peoples see the conquest – referred to as the “so-called conquest” – as an unmitigated disaster.

More:
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-mexico-marks-500-years-since-aztecs-capitals-fall-with-public/

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Mexico marks 500 years since Aztec's capital's fall with public spectacles, political rancor and har (Original Post) Judi Lynn Aug 2021 OP
I think the Catholic Church's behavior was the Haggard Celine Aug 2021 #1

Haggard Celine

(16,820 posts)
1. I think the Catholic Church's behavior was the
Thu Aug 12, 2021, 09:38 PM
Aug 2021

worst part of the conquest. They brought the Inquisition to Mexico and executed many of native people. Also, they wiped out much of the native works of art and, especially, they destroyed nearly all of their recorded history. It's unforgivable.

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