< 500 Years Later, The Spanish Conquest Of Mexico Is Still Being Debated

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:

Now let's go back in time, 500 years. Two people are about to meet and change the history of the Americas forever. The result will be the fall of the Aztec empire and the creation of new Spain, which will become Mexico. James Fredrick tells us more from Mexico City.

JAMES FREDRICK, BYLINE: It's November 8, 1519. Hernando Cortes (ph) and his 500 fellow conquistadors are walking into the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan, now Mexico City. They are amazed. Welcoming them is the empire's ruler, King Montezuma II. He greets Cortes, and then something strange happens. The conquistadors said Montezuma immediately surrendered his empire to them.

MATTHEW RESTALL: The more than I thought about that, the more I decided it just didn't quite make sense.

FREDRICK: That's historian Matthew Restall from Penn State University. His 2018 book, "When Montezuma Met Cortes," argues that our understanding of the Spanish conquest is all wrong.

RESTALL: How amazing that Cortes and a small band were able to defeat an empire of millions in a few years. That is this colossal of misconception and misunderstanding.

FREDRICK: Restall believes conquistadors secretly jailed and then murdered Montezuma but made up the story of surrender to make the conquest more palatable. He also says local enemies of the Aztecs and disease were keys to their downfall, not the Spanish. In the heart of Mexico City, centuries-old truths still lie underground.

Below me is the archeological site Templo Mayor, the great Aztec temple of its time. And in the background is the great Catholic cathedral that the Spanish built literally on top of this holy site once they had conquered the city.

CARLOS JAVIER GONZALEZ: (Speaking Spanish).

FREDRICK: I'm joined here by Carlos Javier Gonzalez and Raul Barrera Rodriguez from Mexico's National Institute for Anthropology and History.

GONZALEZ: (Speaking Spanish).

FREDRICK: Gonzalez says that when the Spanish arrived to Tenochtitlan, the first place they were brought was here, the great temple, because it was the symbol of the empire's power. This 200-foot-tall pyramid was seen as the center of the universe. And the city around it was impressive.

RAUL BARRERA RODRIGUEZ: (Speaking Spanish).

FREDRICK: Barrera says Tenochtitlan was a huge city. It had public institutions, a whole system of governments, schools, public services. It was a totally organized city. I meet Jose Maria Rosas (ph), a 62-year-old taxi driver from Mexico City who's visiting the ruins for the first time.

JOSE MARIA ROSAS: (Speaking Spanish).

FREDRICK: He says he feels like he's going back in time here to try to understand his roots as a descendant of these Indigenous people. After the Aztecs were defeated and the city destroyed, Spanish accounts portrayed them as uncivilized, savage barbarians. They cite the tzompantli, a tower made of human skulls that Barrera and his team continue to excavate a few blocks away. He says the Spanish willingly ignored its significance in Aztec culture.

BARRERA RODRIGUEZ: (Speaking Spanish).

FREDRICK: He says it's important to understand the world view of the Aztecs and their complex rituals around death. This tower was about giving life to their god of war and the sun. Historian Restall says the conquistadors later invented a savage image of the Aztecs.

RESTALL: They used it to justify not only conquest and colonization but any and all acts of violence that subsequently emerged.

FREDRICK: Correcting the historical record has modern day implications, he argues.

RESTALL: Indigenous peoples today can more easily be marginalized, mistreated, ignored if there's a popular belief out there that in some sense their ancestors were barbarians who needed to be civilized.

FREDRICK: For NPR News, I'm James Fredrick in Mexico City.

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