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The Broken Spears Essay

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The Broken Spears by Miguel Leon Portilla portrays many themes about the spanish conquest in the account of the Aztecs.However, The Seven Myth of the Spanish Conquest by Matthew Restall conveys themes harmonize with The Broken Spears concepts. In The Broken Spear the spaniards were perceived as barbaric by the Aztecs and vise versa. When the spaniards attacked during the fiesta of Toxcatl they performed a lot of bloodshed and barbaric actions. “They struck others in the shoulders, and their arms were torn from their bodies. They wounded some in the thigh and some in the calf. They slashed others in the abdomen, and their entrails all spilled to the ground. Some attempted to run away, but their intestines dragged as they ran; they seemed to tangled their feet on their own entrails (pg 76).” This quote demonstrates that the spaniards …show more content…

One of the myths was the “completion” which portrayed the idea that the indigenous people were completely overtaken and were easily converted to catholicism.When the reality was that it took a lot of strife and battles to make the Aztecs finally submit to catholicism. “When the battle of Cholula was finished the Cholultecas understood and believed that the God of the white men who were His most powerful sons, were more potent than their own (pg 48).” This quote demonstrates how the Cholultecas believed in catholicism as well as deemed the spaniards as gods themselves. However, Restall reiterated in his book that the indigenous people knew that the spaniards were not divine, but ultimately confirmed and submitted to save their lives and entwined catholicism into their culture rather than being completely overtaken by it. In conclusion, The Broken Spears by Miguel Leon Portilla and The Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest by Matthew Restall convey similar concepts of the Aztecs and the spaniards during the Spanish

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