Book Review of Stefan Rinke's "Conquistadors and Aztecs: A History of the Fall of Tenochtitlan"

Conquistadors and Aztecs: A History of the Fall of Tenochtitlan
By Stefan Rinke
Translated by Christopher Reid
Oxford University Press
Hardcover, 328 pages
$34.95

Book Review by Pete Warzel

The fall of the Mexica (Aztec) capital city, Tenochtitlan, and subsequent colonization of what we now call Mexico, is rife with misconceptions, and holds our interest as the start of the movement north into our New Mexico. There are many parallels of struggle, colonization, and after-effects for indigenous populations between the Valley of Mexico invasion and the entrada into the kingdom of New Mexico. Dr. Rinke, professor of the Department of History at the Institute of Latin American Studies at Freie University, Berlin, has written a detailed but engaging history that clarifies Spanish disruption and settlement of the Americas. The book has been translated from the German original.

“By the time Christopher Columbus dies in Valladolid, Spain, on May 20, 1506, the euphoria about his westward voyage and the newly discovered territories in the Indies had turned to disillusionment.” That fitting start to this book encapsulates succinctly the discovery and fitful exploration from 1492. Enter Cortes: Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro Altamirano.

Dr. Rinke gives a good history of the Spanish Caribbean and existing colonial cities before the further exploration of the Mexican mainland, as well as a brief history of Cortés’ familial background and first successes in the region.  The Mainland action begins in November 1518, when an expedition was put together in Santiago, Cuba where Cortés was the mayor for the Yucatan and then further inland. What is clear in the preparations for conquest is the politics of the Spanish court, colonies, and expansion in the new world. Everything is political intrigue. It is a distant echo of our own times of incivility and urge to political/economic gain, but perhaps on a grander scale. This is an international stage; Europe and the new unknown. Cortés has enemies in the new world, specifically in the Governor of Cuba, Diego Velázquez, and his minions. Money, position, and pay-off are the keys to the kingdom, and all the players are adept at working the system to their advantage. The Velázquez/Cortés rivalry goes on for years.

The expedition is a “hueste” defined by the Crown taking a share of the profits, and there is no doubt that the army that accompanied Cortés as he set sail, was a corps of three hundred soldiers of fortune. Rinke iterates that gold is the mantra here. The irony is that they, the mercenaries, certainly including Cortés, are deeply religious and baptism competes as the driving force for conquest with greed. This will remain the pattern throughout the conquest of Mexico and New Mexico – economic gain for the Crown and self, and “…the use of the cross as a war symbol…was very important.” “…They were able to cultivate an image of themselves as missionaries of the sword, even though, in reality, this was only a cover for their true motivation.”

The outline of the conquest is known to us all. The detail of how it worked is the core of this book. Rinke’s research is rigorous. We think of the original three hundred Spaniards and the impossibility of conquering the great Mexica city-state and alliances with such a small army, grown to six hundred fifty soldiers at the final fall of Tenochtitlan. But the scale of the indigenous allies is staggering: twenty thousand at the final push for conquest. These allies were as politically adept as the Spanish, with ongoing maneuvering between the Aztec overlords and the Spanish, waiting, in effect, to see where the cards would fall, on an ongoing basis. The Tlaxcalans, who we know as a part of the history of Santa Fe, were the mainstay of the Spanish ancillary forces, fierce and with a literal axe to grind against the Mexicas.

The conflict and conquest took four battles after the Spanish fled their initial peaceful entry into the city. This war was a constant cycle of defeat, retreat, regrouping, defeat and retreat, all bloody and brutal. The Tlaxcalans were intent on genocide of the Mexica in their capital city. The Spanish army grew with reinforcements and soldiers changing sides when Cortés defeated an opposing expedition sent by Velázquez to remove Cortés from his potentially lucrative position in Mexico.

The key underlying elements of Aztec defeat included a real hesitancy by Moctezuma to forcefully engage the invaders. Negotiations and gifts were the initial defense, perhaps partly due to Mexica myths of the return of their own god, Quetzalcoatl in the guise of the Spanish invaders. Further, the tenuous political alliances and tribute power held by Tenochtitlan fueled these rival states for revenge and alliance with the Spanish in numbers that strengthened the invading force to one of sufficient size to lay siege to the city and prevail. The tradition of “flower wars,” where rival city-states engaged in battle to take prisoners for ritual sacrifice and not specifically to kill the enemy on the battlefield, was a cultural handicap in a position of all-out war by the Spanish, and the violent revenge motivation of the Tlazcalans. Finally, the Mexica did fight to win, but the siege, including a ring of ships built by the Spanish specifically to blockade the city on Lake Texcoco, was the key to victory, as related by one Spanish chronicle of the invasions: “More people die of hunger than from the iron.”

The result of the conquest from 1518 to 1521 was an established Spanish capital city on mainland Mexico, a base for further exploration of what we know as New Mexico beginning in 1540, and first colonization in 1598. “The conquest of Tenochtitlan was thus the culmination of a Mesoamerican war, which must be understood as part of the long history of military conflicts between the Mexica and their countless enemies.” Cortés did not conquer the Aztecs with a handful of Spanish mercenaries but with superior weapons and the allied city-states that knew how to play Cortés and Moctezuma against each other for their own political and economic gain. Mesoamerica and the Valley of Mexico were structurally unstable to begin with. The Spanish invaders provided a hesitancy in proactive defense by the Aztecs through their myths of gods returning, as well as the opportunity for Tlaxcalans, and Totanocs to ally with the superior and maybe mystical firepower, to affect revenge, brutal revenge, on their Mexica overlords. But it was the sheer number of allies that was the key. Three hundred Spanish conquistadors, even with magical guns and horses, could not have accomplished the conquest.

Dr. Rinke creates a well-defined history of the seemingly “miraculous” victory of the Spaniards against the powerful Mexica city-state. It is a history we know but know much better now due to this fine work of historical research and writing.