Hernan Cortes was a Spaniard that earned his reputation as a merciless, greedy religious fanatic. He began his career as a Conquistador when In 1519, at the age of 34, he lead an expedition to Mexico. He had 11 ships, 100 sailors, 508 soldiers, and 16 horses. These plus a few muskets, crossbows, pikes, and swords were the instruments with which Cortes defeated thousands of native warriors. The tale of how he conquered the Mexican Empire is only equaled by the depths of cruelty practiced by the sophisticated and cosmopolitan Aztecs.
In 1519 Montezuma was the head of the vast empire and the chief priest. He oversaw and participated in the thousands of human sacrifices to Huitzilopochtli the chief deity of the Mexican people (the term Mexican now identifies a citizen of Mexico but the “Aztecs” were distinguished from hundreds of other tribes by the designation “Mexicas”. Montezuma lead a large, well organized army, the chief objective of which was to capture sacrificial victims in battle. The Aztecs also forced the subjugated nations under Aztec control to pay tribute in the form of humans for sacrifice.
“…the Aztecs claim to be descended from the Toltec nobility, and their gods- Huitzilopochtli in particular-are raised to the same level as the ancient creative gods Tezcadipoca, and Quetzalcoatl. But most important of all is the exalted praise given to what can only be called a mystical conception of warfare, dedicating the Aztec people, the “people of the sun,” to the conquest of all other nations. In part the motive was simply to extend the rule of Tenochtitlan, but the major purpose was to capture victims for sacrifice, because the source of all life, the sun, would die unless it were fed with human blood…”
The sacrifices included skinning children alive that had spent their whole life in cages being fattened for the tables of their captors. Every civilization has some cannibalism somewhere in its past but the extent to which the religious practice of human sacrifice was practiced in Tenochtitlan in 1519 (present day Mexico City) has never occurred before or since.
Keep in mind that Tenochtitlan was one of the largest cities in the world (as many as 25 million people, according to some estimates) and one of the most developed cities in the western world, comparable to Constantinople in size and cultural achievements. Sacrifices accompanied by cannibalistic feasts and psychedelic drugs occurred almost every minute for weeks on end during certain religious seasons.
Cortes started with five hundred men, commandeered about 500 more and also had allies from neighboring tribes that wished to throw off the yoke of Aztec bondage. He landed at Cozumel Island off the coast of present day Yucatan, then continued North up the coast and made allies of Indian peoples who hated the Aztecs. Upon reaching present day Vera Cruz, he burned his ships so his men would not think about turning back and buried some of the timbers.
After reaching present day Mexico City and being given the keys to the city by the indecisive and vacillating Montezuma, Cortes kidnapped Montezuma and threatened to kill him if he did not follow Cortes’ wishes.
Montezuma was killed either by his own people or the Spanish. The Spanish were trapped in the island city after they had killed the upper echelon of the Aztec military during an Aztec display of dancing. It is difficult to know whether the Spanish killed the warriors because they sensed an attack was imminent or whether they were surrounded by warriors after the massacre of the Aztec soldiers:
” They ran in among the dancers, forcing their way to the place where the drums were played. They attacked the man who was drumming and cut off his arms. Then they cut off his head, and it rolled across the floor.
They attacked all the celebrants, stabbing them, spearing them, striking them with their swords. They attacked some of them from behind, and these fell instantly to the ground with their entrails hanging out. Others they beheaded: they cut off their heads, or split their heads to pieces.
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 tangle their feet in their own entrails. No matter how they tried to save themselves, they could find no escape.”
Cortes, absent to recruit more fighting men, fought his way back into the city while his men within the city fought to save their own lives. After reaching his men and helping to defend them within the city, Cortes and his men tried to sneak across the Tlacopan causeway at night. They were spotted and Aztecs in boats converged on the Spanish from across the water.
“La Noche Triste” or the Night of Tears is still celebrated in Mexico. When Cortes finally reached Tlaxcala five days after fleeing Tenochtitlan by way of the Tlacopan causeway, he had lost over 860 Spanish soldiers. Other sources estimate that nearly half of the Spanish and almost all of this native allies were killed or wounded. His eyes teared up but the first person about whom he inquired was the ship builder, Lopez. Already he was planning the next step in his plan to subjugate the Aztec civilization!
Cortez, however kept the core of his army intact and pushed on to achieve an amazing military victory that ranks along with the conquests of Alexander. The Aztecs army which may have numbered 300,000 failed because holding prisoners took up the Aztec force’s manpower and when they took Spanish prisoners the incurably religious Aztecs could not say “no” to a barbeque accompanied by the buzz from strong psychedelic mushrooms and the screams of their victims.
Thus, the superstitious Aztecs never followed up their victories, while Cortez never waivered from his purpose. It is difficult to say whether Cortes was motivated most by the revulsion he felt when witnessing the depravity of the Aztec’s perverted religious system or by his lust for power and gold. He was highly motivated to extract the beating heart of the Aztec culture.
Cortes and his men traveled about eight hundred miles back to Vera Cruz with sick and wounded men across volcanic plateaus and up to elevations near glacial peaks, then down to steaming rain forests. After hundreds of miles of difficult mountain travel, Cortez reached Vera Cruz and instructed the ship builder, who had survived the Night of Tears, to build thirteen ships from indigenous timeber and remnants of the ships that Cortez saved when he burned the fleet. Some pf the new ships were forty feet long. The armada was built, disassembled and then portaged back across the mountain passes to the shores of Lake Texcoco.
Now the urban combat was to begin in earnest as Cortes’ men launched a naval invasion across the lake, went into the city and fought street by street and house to house.
He had already engineered a system of alliances with surrounding tribes, many of which had been previously dominated by the Aztecs. The cadre of Spanish and their native allies soon subjugated and controlled the whole area, helping themselves to its wealth and enslaving the people. But within twenty years, the Spanish authorities responded to calls for reform from the church and the worst aspects of Spanish rule were ameliorated.
Why do many of us condemn the holocaust but feel sentimental romanticism for lost Aztec culture?
It is common to bemoan the lack of cultural sensitivity exhibited by Conquistadors like Cortes. It is problematic, however, to cast the Aztec civilization in the mantle of victimhood when beholding the image of a fattened child raised in an Aztec cage. Like the pagan civilizations destroyed by the ancient Israelites, practices such as slowly peeling off the skin of a living victim and then removing the beating heart before the victim’s eyes cried out to be stopped. Cortes and his men were an instrument that stopped the Aztec cultural stronghold from spreading its foul grip.
This is the challenge that President-elect Obama now faces. He has a war in Afghanistan on his hands that he has promised to prosecute and the battle space has already spread into Pakistan and Mumbai. Pakistan is teetering between elements in its government that are affiliated with Al Qaeda and the official Pakistani policy of working with the United States. During his campaign, Mr. Obama raised the issue of invading Pakistan, but it seems evident that there is no viable strategy by which a city or cities can be invaded and subjugated in a manner that destroys enthusiasm for jihad.
Destroying the morale of the extremists, of course was the Neo-Conservative rationale behind invading Iraq. The theory was that sufficient humiliation within the seat of the ancient Caliphate would make way for Democracy to replace Islamic totalitarianism.
This is a gun blog and not a blog for foreign policy wonks. Nevertheless, our U.S. intelligence and foreign agencies will investigate whether Pakistan intelligence really had a hand in the attack on Mumbai, as the Indian authorities are alleging. Then the new Secretary of State should submit the evidence with a list of names of the guilty Pakistani officials, if any. And demand that they be hung by their necks in front of the world- or we will come and get them.
According to the Los Angeles Times:
“For Pakistan’s fledgling civilian government, however, the more immediate concern may be its own uneasy dealings with the ISI, over which it has been trying to assert greater control. Until 2001, the spy agency was the chief patron of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a now-banned militant group created in the 1980s to foment unrest in Kashmir. Some analysts have said the carefully choreographed Mumbai attacks bore some of the group’s hallmarks, though no conclusive evidence has emerged.
“It’s very likely this group has an involvement at some level, but it’s difficult to characterize because of the murky nature of how they operate,” said Kamran Bokhari, an analyst at Stratfor, a private intelligence company.
In another break from the past, the Mumbai attacks generated a near-constant stream of high-level communication between the two countries. On Friday, Zardari reminded Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of his own wife’s assassination by suspected Islamic militants, appealing to the Indian leader not to let insurgents set the regional agenda.
“We should not fall into the militants’ trap,” he said.”
If the jihadists come to our public places with AK-47s, we the people will kill them. We will not let them gun down our children and wives. Our police officers will not go against them alone. We will not spend critical minutes waiting for a SWAT team to deploy.
We prefer the culture of gentle Christian warriors to a culture that buries young women alive as a form of “honor” killing and throws acid in their faces because they choose to get educated. This is not the time to wring our hands and discuss moral quandaries. Mumbai will be the future for America if we are indecisive as a nation. The Lone Wolf attack at Fort Hood is a harbinger of things to come.
Americans are strong and smart and ready to deal with our enemies ruthlessly. Our compassion and tolerance should not be mistaken for weakness.
Whatever you political persuasion or feelings about the occupations of the two nations of Iraq and Afghanistan, President Bush demonstrated that it is a mistake to threaten and terrorize the people of the United States. History demonstrates the futility of attempting to occupy the Arabic homeland. But,ironically, the President-elect may have to become more like Cortes than President Bush to untie the knot that appears to exist in the government of Pakistan.
Does President-elect Obama have the iron resolve and singleness of purpose to face down America’s enemies, enemies that have set their faces to accomplish nothing less than to subjugate the West? If you think extremists are unrealistic fanatics, stop and read your history books again. The story of Cortes’ exploits should convince you that a few men can quickly accomplish the impossible if they are set in their purposes. Look at the American Revolution in which ragged colonists challenged the mightiest army and navy on earth.
In conclusion, though he may be tempted to try, Mr. Obama, cannot solve the problem of terrorism by restricting our ability to defend ourselves with armed force against such attacks. The face of Islamic extremism is the modern equivalent of Aztec bloodletting; i.e., the Face of Evil.
See video of testimony from Senate hearing related to mass shooting in Texas.
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