Reading about the last days of ancient Mexico during my last days in contemporary Mexico

I just finished Conquest: Montezuma, Cortés, and the Fall of Old Mexico by Hugh Thomas. It was an interesting read, especially in light of what I already knew about the conquista and how it is viewed in Mexican popular culture. The mythology that Mexicans have about their nation's "founding fathers" is very different than in the United States. Moctezuma is fairly loathed, while Cortés and La Malinche (his indigenous translator) have a status as sort of evil Adam and Eve. The only one who comes across well is Cuahtémoc, the last Aztec emperor. Unlike say, George Washington, he was captured, tortured subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques, and eventually executed by the Spanish.

The personality of Cortés and Moctezuma seems to have a lot to do with how the conquest went down (and indeed that the conquest succeeded period). Guns and metal armor certainly helped, but they weren't really a deciding factor. It was often so hot the Spanish switched to indigenous cotton armor, and a dozen slow-loading arquebuses were of limited use against armies numbering in the thousands. It is pretty odd that Cortés won at all: Again and again things just turned out in his favor. One good illustration of his peculiar combination of chutzpah, cunning, and luck was when the governor of Cuba sent a larger force of Spaniards to arrest him for overstepping his mission of "exploration." Cortés led a nighttime assault and captured the other commander, suffering almost no casualties. Bribing the men to join him with large quantities of Mexican gold, he had now doubled the size of his force. Even more helpful, the new soldiers brought small pox with them, which wiped out around 50% of the Mexica.

Moctezuma is a lot harder to figure out, and this book only helped somewhat. One of the interesting (though frustrating) things about Mesoamerican civilization is that it is just so alien to the western mindset. The educated classes in particular were so thoroughly exterminated during the conquest that a lot of the intricacies of their culture are lost forever. Moctezuma's actions especially are baffling and involve a lot of speculation. Other ideas about Moctezuma may have arisen post-conquest to attempt to explain the unlikely defeat.

After Moctezuma was taken hostage, he apparently developed Stockholm syndrome, and came to have a real fondness and even dependence upon Cortés. The conquistador was known to have had a Mansonesque personal magnetism about him and often managed to convert captured enemies into his most loyal followers. He had a way of playing the savior who would rescue prisoners from the cruelty of his own men and restore them a portion of their former dignity. It worked on Spanish and Indigenous alike.

But how the &%$#! did the most feared man to walk the Earth allow himself to be cowed and taken prisoner so easily? Aztec emperors weren't effete hereditary monarchs, but mentally and physically tough elites chosen by a council of high nobles. Before the arrival of Cortés, his reign could be viewed quite favorably compared to his predecessors. And after Moctezuma the Mexicans fought nearly to the last man.

The only thing I can think of is that Moctezuma was so accustomed to being feared as a demi-god that he was thrown off his game by a man who wasn't intimidated by him. The Aztecs maintained control through terrifying, showy displays of power. Cortes' audacity and sangfroid may have caused him to lose his nerve, and the Spaniard (a skilled manipulator) could read it in him even before they met in person.

Once Moctezuma's own subjects were fed up enough to stone him to death themselves the Mexican defense began in earnest. They adapted themselves quite well considering the rigidity of their society, but Cortés was a wily opponent. Once the aura of Tenochtitlan's invincibility was shattered, old enemies came out of the woodwork in droves to assist the Spanish. An epidemic that killed one out of every two Indians but left the Spanish untouched didn't help much either.

Another huge factor was that for Mesoamericans war was a religious spectacle, conducted in close consultation with ritual calenders and involving a lot of costumes, music and dancing. For the Spanish it was war-war, where you kill as many people however easiest you can do it. This book made a fairly good argument for the idea that the Aztecs suffered terribly for their stubborn insistence on trying to capture the Spanish alive for later sacrifice. It's hard to prove, but how else could the Spanish (often wearing cotton armor) have mowed through ranks of soldiers trained from birth so easily? Cortés himself was captured alive no less than 3 times, but each time another Spaniard waded through the thick of battle and freed him. Surely if they had not acted in the manner of the Penguin upon capturing Batman, they would've stopped the Spanish cold. But that wasn't how the Aztecs rolled; Tenochtitlan's final stand against foreign barbarians was not the time to displease their gods. Perhaps given the extraordinary threat of Cortés, it was all the more important that he be captured alive, that he be forced to dance for hours holding a paper flag, that he have his heart cut out by the high priest of Huitzilopochli, that his corpse fall bouncing down the steps of the Templo Mayor, and that the victors divide up his body for use in ritual cannibalism.

Cortés did die in Spain a broken man, his achievements forgotten and the empire he conquered governed by pencil pushing bureaucrats. The conquistador's conquistador met the most ignoble demise an adventuring mercenary could face, just as Moctezuma (heckled and stoned by the masses once forbidden to meet his gaze) suffered the most shameful imaginable end for a god-king.

Burroughs pilgrimage fail

Mexico City has a history of harboring interesting fugitives. On a previous trip with Jenny, we visited the house where Leon Trotsky was assassinated by an ice pick wielding Stalinist agent. This weekend I make a solo excursion to D.F. , where among other activities, I decided to track down the scene of another grisly event. This one involved William S Burroughs after he'd fled the US on drug charges. The place I wanted to visit of course was the bar where he accidentally shot and killed his wife, Joan Vollmer, during a drunken William Tell reenactment.

I took a Primera Plus bus to Mexico City, and they provided apples in their snack pack. It's annoying that they're individually plastic wrapped, but thoughtful in a way, as though they'd anticipated my reason for visiting Mexico City and thought to include thematically relevant foodstuffs. Anyway, I began to conceive of a vague plan to photograph the individually wrapped apple atop my head.

According to the internets, the building is at 122 Monterrey and houses a restaurant selling enchiladas. I got there later than I was hoping to, having spent way too much time in the National Museum of Anthropology. (While I've already been to the museum four or five times, now that I know I'm leaving Mexico, it felt like the last time I'd ever visit). So after saying goodbye to the feathered coyote, the turtle with a man's head, and the mistress of the skirt of snakes, I found it was already getting towards dusk. This was worrying, as I sort of expected it to be a sketchy area (I don't know why).

When I got there I encountered a more existential sort of danger: There just wasn't much to see. It's a drab apartment building. There is a restaurant on the corner, but it had already shuttered for the evening. Looking for...something, I found a poster taped to a phone booth for a garage sale at the Woody Allen Cultural Center. While intriguing, it just didn't seem like the message Burroughs would send from the beyond. Maybe if the poster had been advertising half-human/half-centipede creatures or talking assholes. The door to the building was open a crack though, and I slipped in, under the suspicious gaze of a woman waiting at a bus stop. Inside the building, it was just a building. There were some people doing their laundry on the roof top.

The plan to photograph myself with the apple was also thwarted by my not having a camera. The above image therefore is a forgery, though it is authentically the apple provided by Primera Plus.

Evil menudo warlock

His other diabolical scheme involves recently made tortillas.

Goodbye BBC, hello Al Jazeera

I just started to regularly download podcasts of BBC Mundo to listen to on my way to work, when it was announced that this would be the very last Spanish language radio broadcast for Latin America ever due to funding cuts. After 73 years, I only got to listen to four or five broadcasts before they pulled the plug. So now I guess I'll have to tune in to Fox News Español for in-depth reporting on Latin American affairs. (Hmmm...my iTunes search is showing "no results".)

Instead, BBC Mundo is now offering a weekly news discussion thing...I gave the first episode a listen and thought it was kind of lame--the sort of "news" show they cobble together without actually having any reporters. This sad discovery coincided with some recent remarks Hillary Clinton made about the U.S. media in relation to Al Jazeera:

"You may not agree with it, but you feel like you're getting real news around the clock instead of a million commercials and, you know, arguments between talking heads and the kind of stuff that we do on our news that is not providing information..."

Interestingly, Al Jazeera apparently now has more bureaus in Latin America than BBC or CNN. I don't think there's an Al Jazeera Español podcast yet, but maybe soon...

Higher Education

In Spanish, to be polite is to be educated, regardless of whether you passed the third grade or not. Sometimes I feel that Mexican culture seems so old world, with a level of chivalry and manners that we North Americans have completely given up on. But then something happens that makes me feel the opposite way, and I start grumbling about how they're all a bunch of...well, I think some ugly xenophobic thoughts. Sorry.

Part of the stated mission of this blog is to write my interpretations and misinterpretations of Mexican culture, but it is actually more difficult than it would seem. Are Mexicans more polite or more rude than people from the U.S.? To try to settle this question about the land conquered by Señor Cortés (literally, Mr. Courtesy), I've decided to start writing occasional posts in which I counterbalance one aspect of Mexican educación with one grosería.

educación (politeness)

Yesterday, I went with Jenny to a doctor's appointment, and we shared a spacious elevator with another couple. We hadn't said a word to each other, but they politely asked our permission before exiting. I was a little dumbstruck, because con permiso is often used when you need to get past someone. Were we somehow in their way? We clearly weren't, they were just being courteous. According to my Spanish tutor, it's also good to ask permission when passing through a room with only one person in it, for example an empty lobby with a secretary, to acknowledge that she is a person and not just furniture.

grosería (rudeness)

Mexicans love cell phones, a technology that assists them in being even more distracted. Imagine if we Americans had a device that automatically extended our stomach size whenever we walked into Hardees. Or a special machine that could help lower the IQ's of politicians whenever they were debating whether to invade middle eastern countries.

Cell phones are used everywhere here. It's pretty common to hear the guy in the bathroom stall next to you having some kind of business meeting. I took an informal survey of some students, and only one was grossed out by the idea. (And forget trying to get them to turn theirs off during the class). When going to the movies, you can pretty much expect not only that a phone will go off, but that someone will also answer it. Most annoying are the people who sit several rows in front of you texting their friends. Then occasionally they get entranced by the movie and just leave their phone on, so it's like someone pointing a flashlight in your face. Jenny even reported someone taking a call at a funeral. So in the alternative reality where I am appointed emperor of Mexico, my first act will be to ban mobile phones outright.

Movie review: Año bisiesto (Leap Year)

Well, this is not a "first date" movie. Nor is it fun for the whole family. It is the story of a woman who lives alone in Mexico City in miserable solitude, marking off the days of the calendar until the anniversary of her father's death. She works from home and really only leaves her apartment to pick up anonymous strangers for sex. We learn bits and pieces when her mother calls to pester or she talks to her work, but there is little conversation with most of the men she brings home. One in particular talks with his actual girlfriend on the phone longer than he does with her.

Even though we're held at arm's length from her character for a long time, there's still a feeling of being trapped there with her. She hardly ever leaves the apartment, so we don't either. We watch her watch TV, go to the bathroom, pick her nose, masturbate, eat cold soup out of a can, put groceries away, spy on the neighbors--we're forced to share in her loneliness.

I don't want to reveal what happens, but her life takes an interesting turn that becomes rather disturbing and then even rather more disturbing. I was actually kind of surprised that one scene in particular could be shown that graphically, especially in conservative-Catholic Mexico (those notches on her back aren't the only thing that is X about this movie). Maybe an independent film like this is under the radar of folks who howl about moral decay and whatnot.

The director is (strangely enough) an Australian, but has lived in Mexico for a while. The film feels really Mexican, and I wouldn't have known he was a foreign director if it wasn't for the fact that "una pelicula de Michael Rowe" kind of jumps out at you. (But then, what do I know, I'm a foreigner too).

Here's a link to a short trailer.

Do you use airplane or drinkmilk?

I've started a continuing education class in literature at ITESO, partly because I get an employee discount and partly to force myself to speak more Spanish. Unfortunately, it is a 3 hour class after I finish work on Fridays. Last night was our first session, and we started with Agustín Yañez, who I didn't know, but is apparently a native son of Guadalajara who is important in Mexican literature. My Spanish skills have been flagging lately, so I was a little nervous about joining the class, especially after the teacher started talking about how Yañez is remarkable for his immense range of vocabulary including a lot of typically Guadalajaran words that are now anachronistic. I stuck it out pretty well for the first hour though, listening in silence with most of the class not realizing that I'm a foreigner. And then my mind began to wander as she read a long autobiographical account of Yañez's childhood growing up in Barrio de Santuario...what pulled me back was the teacher going around the room asking everyone: ¿Usas avión o bebeleche?

Okay, the teacher is asking us a question. Avión= airplane, bebeleche=either baby milk or drink milk, which syllable is she stressing? Wait, either way the question makes absolutely no sense!

Meanwhile, everyone else seemed to have an immediate answer. I felt like I was the applicant in the Monty Python sketch about the job interview. I was afraid that if I confessed that I didn't know what was going on, it would prove that I didn't speak enough Spanish to be in the class, so I was preparing to answer "avión". Luckily she gave up asking before she got to me. My senses were very acute for the next few minutes, and making use of this adrenaline fueled acumen, I pieced together that these are two alternative names for the game of hopscotch. I definitely dodged a bullet; if I'd answered "avión" as planned, I rather doubt that anyone in the room would have believed I called it that in the barrio where I grew up.

What would Jesus pirate?

Wow, I've been incredibly lazy about posting since my return to Mexico. Here's a photo I snapped of the odd phenomena of street stands that specialize in illegally pirated religious music and videos.

More rambling about Mexican Immigration

Pictured above, our xmas nativity.

I made it through Veracruz, passed a few pleasant days in Oaxaca, and headed back to Guadalajara.

Sadly, going back to Guadalajara meant going back to the immigration office. Of course my paperwork had been rejected once again (for mysterious reasons), and now I would have to pay a huge fee for a special letter allowing me to leave the country for Christmas. This time I got an "audience" with some big boss to protest the situation. Typical of Mexico, behind the supposed web of intricate bureaucracy and complex rules there is a swaggering patrón who decides everything according to his capricious moods. The "audencia" happens right in the packed waiting room of the lobby. El Patrón calls out names one by one, and you have to push forward and make your case before he loses interest or someone else grabs his attention. Unfortunately, I hesitated a bit after he barked out "¡Dígame!" (tell me!). That, combined with my accent, was too much. He cut me off before I got a whole sentence out and told me to write my NUT number on a scrap of paper so he could research my case file. Then I had to wait another two hours before talking to him again. There are worse fates though. Another guy (who was a native Spanish speaker) failed to respond after his name was called 3 times. When he finally did answer, El Patrón contemptuously crumpled up his slip of paper in front of him and skipped to the next person.

This was the last day before the offices closed for Christmas. If my papers weren't in order, I wouldn't be able to get back into the country. In the end, Jenny who works at the American School, had to talk to someone to talk to someone so that an expert with inside connections could come to my rescue. Having spent from 8:30 am to 4:30 PM, I was the very last person there, but I finally got my damn work visa extended for another year. Since I'm not staying that long, this means I should never, never have to go back there again...(knock on wood).

Now I am back in the land of War on Christmas for a few weeks to relax, drink non-poisonous water straight out of the tap, be cold, and other such yuletide traditions.

Helicopter blades correctly installed and vehicle is ready for takeoff.

I love museums in general, but they can´t all be winners. When I was a kid I was very attached to a "Pirates & Buccaneers" coloring book, which I think is what led me to think going to the Veracruz Naval Museum would be a good idea. After all, a venerable museum in this historic port should be filled with Spanish cannons, old maps, cutlasses, blunderbusses, pirate flags, and so on. Unfortunately, this tourist attraction would be more aptly named "The Veracruz Museum of Falling Apart Dioramas and Blurry Photocopies."

The building is a former naval academy and it is staffed by uniformed women of the Mexican Navy. They operate it as they would any other military bureaucracy, with a curious attention to the minutia of regulations. The attendant watched like a hawk as I filled in each blank of the guest registry, and shook her head "no" when I left one space empty. I didn't understand what the question was asking, so I just wrote my name again. Next, she marched me to the big board to explain the layout of the museum, which rooms I was to visit in what order, and a brief recap of their contents. In some Mexican museums the guards get freaked out if you don´t go through the exhibition halls in the prescribed order. This was definately one of those museums. Naval officers patrolled the halls to shepherd visitors to the rooms they were supposed to go to next. Often they would make curious announcements such as "When this building was a naval academy, the chemistry classroom was here."

The actual contents of the museum were quite dismal. Probably 1 in 30 displays contained an original artifact. Many of them didn't actually say "reproduction", but they clearly were. For example the statue of the Aztec flower god that A) Is actually in The National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City B) HAS NOTHING TO DO WHATSOEVER WITH NAVAL HISTORY. Other highlights included photocopies of portraits of Cortes, photocopies of letters to and from the King of Spain, and photocopies of maps. There were, humorously, pirated pirate flags though--the museum staff had clearly made them with black cloth and house paint.

The oddest gallery in the museum may have been the "modern navy" section. The hall used photographs of training exercises and dioramas to try to construct a kind of GI Joe fantasy world where the Mexican Navy was storming beachheads, launching succesful amphibious assaults, and exploring underwater sea caves with spear guns.

The single most interesting thing in the museum was a stained glass window on the staircase that some cadets were covering over with plywood. Probably they wanted to put a giant color photocopy on top of it.

As dull and miserable as the museum was, I felt some anxiety about leaving because I knew that the attendant would force me to write a comment in the guestbook. Sure enough, when I tried to walk past and ask for my bag back, she looked down at the registry, back up at me, and issued a crisp "Sus comentarios, POR FAVOR." I considered "bien lleno de fotocopias" or "este no es un museo," but I couldn´t with her eyes bearing down on me. I knew I had to write something postive and my contempt would have to lie hidden in the brevity of my praise, so I settled on "bueno." It was a little pathetic, this is what Mexicans say when they answer the phone. She was not satisfied; previous guests had composed whole paragraphs of praiseful commentary. Finally I added "gracias," which was enough to coax her into handing my bag back, if grudgingly.

Yet more things from the Xalapa Museum of Anthropology continued part 2: toys

Strangely enough, in ancient Mexico they had invented the wheel, but they only used it for making toys.

Yet more things from the Xalapa Museum of Anthropology continued: Cosmetic dentistry

Yet more things from the Xalapa Museum of Anthropology--decapitated ball player

Instead of blood, 7 serpents sprout from where his head was removed. Seven serpent was also the name of the god of ripe corn. The harvest of corn was symbollicaly like beheading; the former to feed humans, the latter to feed the gods.

Zempoala

Continuing my wander through Veracruz, I stopped at these Totonaco ruins. They´re especially notable for being the first city the Spanish encountered in the Americas and a stepping stone in the conquest of Mexico. When Spanish scouts reported a city built of pure silver in the distance, Cortes and his men set out immediately, but it turned out only to be the polished white stucco gleaming in the sun. Still, Zempoala was a pretty advanced city with temples, defensive walls, systems of drainage and irrigation. King Chicomacotl (who was not exactly chico, he was too heavy to walk) recieved Cortes with lavish gifts, and the two formed an alliance against the Aztecs. One informational plaque noted that Chicomacotl personally offered Cortes 7 ladies, including his own neice. But I´m sure that being such a devout Christian gentleman, Cortes must have responded by lecturing him about sex outside of marriage, ha ha.

In the photo above, I was standing in the middle of a ceremonial gladiator ring. The crenallations atop the low stone wall would have been hidden under elaborate leaf-shaped stucco ornamentation. Warriors captured in the flower wars were brought here to fight to the death. The "home team" so to speak, got to use macuahuitles (wooden swords mounted with razor sharp obsidian blades). The captured warrior weilded a similar instrument, only instead of razor sharp blades, his weopan was studded with feathers. If he somehow managed to defeat his enemy anyway, he had to immediately fight a second warrior. If he won again, he was set free and given all kinds of gifts. This almost never happened though.

In the background is the most important building of the city, the Templo Mayor. It was the site of various shennanigans by Cortes. Here he ordered the idols smashed and a Christian mass to be given to the puzzled Totonacos. Later it was the location of a battle between Cortes and Panfilo de Narvaez, who the governor of Cuba had sent to stop him pillaging and raping strange lands against orders. When Panfilo´s eye was put out, he was obliged to surrender, and suddenly Cortes had even more men under his control.

Despite its historical importance, this was a very laid back place to visit, practically deserted. There were only four other visitors, two of which were teenagers from the town making out behind the temple of the wind god. Only a chain link fence divides the most important buildings from the town. There is another pyramid in a vacant lot beside some store, and even more out in the sugar cane fields. I asked one of the guards about them, and he said that if you give them notice they will take you on a tour, but going alone "no es recomendable." Apparantely the farmers get freaked out by unaccompanied tourists, and its best not to upset a man with a machete in hand.

Mexico's saddest Olmec head

O how the mighty have fallen! Once commoners were forbidden to meet his eyes. Once his name was whispered with awe. How many comely wives kept his mug filled with pulque? How many slaves attended him?

Was he a mighty prince? A high priestof the jaguar cult? The greatest athlete of his generation, who triumphed in the ballcourt to the adulation of thousands?

Now he holds court in the Xalapa bus station, wedged between lost luggage and a kiosk selling useless knick knaks. Continually tormented by the odor of the pay toilets on the 2nd floor, he bides his time eternally gazing out at the taxis whizzing past outside.

Wonderful things from the Xalapa Museum of Anthropology part 4: Yay, you're dead!

These inanely smiling ceramic heads are thought to somehow be associated with death, as they're frequently found in graves.

Wonderful things from the Xalapa Museum of Anthropology part 3: a reconstructed pyramid

They dug up a pyramid "Las Higueras" with original frescoes depicting mythological scenes, ceremonies and ball games. In ancient Mesoamerica it was thought that there was a chance the world might end once every 52 years. So whenever it did not, they would add a new level onto their pyramids to make them more grandiose. The result is that the layers of murals show 3 centuries of changing beliefs and artistic styles.

Wonderful things from the Xalapa Museum of Anthropology part 2: were jaguars

Wonderful things from the Xalapa Museum of Anthropology part 1: Colossal Olmec Heads

Note that it is likely not that distorted, they were really into head shaping.

On the road

I´ve left Guadalajara and I´m travelling a bit with my extra time. Yesterday I took a bus to Mexico City, and then made a random decision to go to Papantla, Veracruz (being the next bus leaving that looked interesting). The big thing to see there are the ruins of El Tajin. I hadn´t yet visited any ruins of the Gulf Coast cultures. On a whim I hired a guide, which I almost never do. You always have to take what they say with a bit of salt, but he was pretty good. He was a Totonaco, a civilization native to Veracruz that way back in the day was suffering under Aztec opression when Cortez came along with a deal to make everything better...He grew up sort of around the ruins, only when he was a kid it was just hilly farmland--the pyramids were still buried underneath.

Because El Tajin had been abandoned so long, they escaped both the Spanish military/religious zeal, as well as the clumsiness of early archeaologists who have tended to reconstruct Mexico´s ancient cities haphazardly. There are some pretty well preserved reliefs along the ballcourts and even sections of original paint on some pyramids. The one pictured was bright red and blue at one time. A lot of the pyramids have shallow niches built into them, which is apparantely unique to this site, and no one is 100% sure what they were for. This Pyramid has (well, had) 365 niches, giving it some kind of calendar function. Also, a lot of the buildings also have ¨greco¨ zig zag patterns that are typical of the Zapotecs, showing an interchange of ideas with Oaxaca. You can see them in this picture on either side of the central staircase.

It´s interesting--for a national INAH site--that Totonacos live kind of in and around unexcavated sections of the ruins. I could see people´s plots of corn in the surrounding hills (well, probably pyramids underneath). Also a short commute if your job is selling knick knacks to tourists. There is a statue of Tajin (aka the rain god Tlaloc) on one of the pyramids, which according to the guide is still focal point of ritual activity. I realize that this completely sounds like the kind of thing that is made up for gullible tourists, but from the strange offhand way he was talking about it I actually think it might be true.