In reality, Montezuma was cocky, confident, and calculating. At the very least, Montezuma may have thought Cortes was coming to make an alliance after killing some of the Aztec’s enemies. In his book and subsequent movie, Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond blames the ease of Spanish conquest on the differences between Spanish and indigenous weaponry. However, the guns used by the Spanish were rudimentary and was a timely process to load. The steel of the swords mixed with the horses the Spanish had brought were easily dodged.
The author gives insight on how many ways the Spaniards used their power to assist in the downfall of the Aztecs. The reason why the Spaniards became victorious, was because the Spaniards were looked upon as if they were gods because of their outer appearance. The Aztecs broke bread and welcomed the Spaniards with gifts and parties. The Aztecs triggered their relationship with the Spaniards by holding a ritual for the arrival of the god which included a human sacrifice. The Spaniards didn’t agree with the rituals and began to despise the Aztecs.
Other times, warriors and citizens from the Aztec Empire went willingly to get sacrificed, it was seen as a death even honorable than getting killed in war. The Aztecs made many other offerings such as food, rubber, feathers, jewels and animal blood but human blood was the most prized by the gods. At the peak of the Aztec Empire, more than one million people were worshipping Huitzilopochtli as the Mexica required the citizens of defeated city-states to worship their gods. Huitzilopochtli affected the worldview of the Mexica in terms of their knowledge. The ritual of sacrificing people for Huitzilopochtli gave the Aztecs knowledge about the human body and surgical skills.
Defeat struck the Aztec Empire in 1521 when Hernan Cortes and his army invaded and conquered Tenochtitlan, bringing the end of the great civilization. Could the Aztecs have done something before, something that could have changed the way the Empire had come to an end? Geography helped in a major way, surrounding the Aztecs with protection from Mt.Popocatepetl and Mt.Iztaccihuatl . The weapons and war strategies that the Aztecs used were very well planned and could have defeated the Spanish. Even so, Montezuma, the emperor of the Aztecs, had to ruin the victory.
“Cortez went on to overthrow the empire of the Aztecs, it was clear that Spain’s empire of the Indies had come to stay.”- Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492-1830, John Huxtable Eliot, p20. Unfortunately for the Indian natives this was well and truly the case. There should be total regret for the ravaging and diminishing treatment of the native peoples that inhabited the lands of the Americas. There can be nothing to celebrate when brutality and violence were inflicted on native peoples during the colonisation of these lands. The natives of islands such as Hispaniola were innocent, meek and naïve.
Coloniality throughout Latin America has been apparent since the 1500s. While the process has changed over to the current contemporary period, colonialism has left it large mark on Latin America. Colonialism has shaped race, class, industries, labor and land throughout Central America and the Caribbean, in ways that leaves visible scars on the land. Hierarchal systems, knowledge, and cultural systems have been shaped by coloniality from the 1500s to contemporary times. Coloniality has take various shapes and forms but it changes presences doesn’t divert from its true nature.
The Aztecs made sacrifice the main purpose of life of these people. Even though they had well executed plans to capture as many people for sacrifice it was no way to treat a person. Also, historians rarely talk about the ulterior motives of the rulers of the Aztec empire and where or not the sacrifices were just for the keeping the gods at ease. One "possible explanation is demographic. If central Mexico was as densely populated as we believe, then the sacrifices may have been a kind of population control (Doc F)."
The Aztecs didn’t easily accept the new religion since they have been following their religion for a very long time (document 3). Conquerors also threatened the natives. It was required that the natives accept the Church as the “Ruler”, and if they didn’t, war would be made against them and their family would become enslaved (document 7). The natives in America suffered severely during this time. In Latin America, the Spanish conquerors overworked the Indian natives and treated them harshly.
According to their own histories the Aztecs had left their homeland in 1168 and journeyed to the lakes where in 1325 where found in Tenochtitlan. By mid-1700’s the Edenic picture of the north had been forgotten in the minds of the authorities in Mexico City. Since most of the settler from the very beginning were Indians and Mestizos and had intermarried with northern natives it wasn’t surprising that eventually saw the border land as their
After the vanish of a once-dominant civilization in Mesoamerica, the Toltecs, the Aztecs arrived around the thirteenth century. Tenochtitlan, the Aztecs’ famous capital city, was constructed and the Aztecs were soon enough the most dominant force in their part of Mexico. The Aztecs were famous for many of their accomplishments and their society’s intricate structures, but their religious practices were particularly famous—or rather, infamous. Human sacrifice was only a part of the strict ritual processes, which were for the gods and goddesses worshiped by the people. It was thought that the Aztecs’ religion had to do with fear of nature and the end of the world.