One of my favorite books is “The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico”, by Bernal Diaz del Castillo. The reason I like it is that old Bernal was not just another book writer but a journal-keeping soldier and witness to events who actually got off the ship with Hernan Cortes in 1519. He was there and saw it all and writes his observations with firsthand authority. Notable is the fact that Bernal was not a journalist writing for money or notoriety but rather a lone individual making a record for his own recollection. He wasn’t grinding an axe, so to speak.
While in Mexico, the Spanish conquistadors encountered, to their disgust and horror, the public sacrificing of humans to appease their gods. These sacrifices were not rare events. Bernal saw large wooden racks stacked with the skeletal remains of Indians.
Here it is in his own words:
“There were piles of human skulls so regularly arranged that one could count them and I estimated them at more than a hundred thousand. I repeat again that there were more than one hundred thousand of them.”
He writes in detail how the Aztec priests hacked up sacrificial human victims and sold the various cuts in a meat market “the same as our butcher shops do at home.” He also noted that being butchered was the fate of prisoners captured in battle, which may have been highly motivational for the Spaniards, if you get my drift.
Cortes was very religious, too but in a totally different way —- to the extent that he demanded the Indians tear down the fierce-looking idols they worshiped and replace them with Christian symbols and, moreover, to give up their religion and stop slaughtering people and become good Catholics.
This caused the Indians to turn on the Spaniards and go to war against them. Montezuma emphatically told Cortes that he had to pray before the Aztec gods thus making war inevitable. This religious animosity was the ultimate key to the disaster which followed.
The clash of Aztec and European civilizations resulted in the complete devastation of the Mexican capitol and the end of its culture of death. Bernal writes in great detail how Cortes overtook Tenochtitlan, Montezuma’s city, and made Montezuma his prisoner. This dissolved the belief among the Aztec people that Montezuma was himself a god, thereby eliminating the respect they had previously of him as their ruler and making it easier for other hostile tribes in Mexico to wage war on his kingdom, thus helping Cortes achieve victory. Then he had Montezuma murdered.
Spanish interpreters later wrote that Montezuma believed Cortes to be an incarnation of their god, Quetzalcoatl, who appeared from the east as predicted in their mythology, and that he lavished Cortes and his men with gifts of gold and luxurious accommodations. Cortes had written this tale in a letter, bragging about it to the king of Spain.
Some people have maintained that Montezuma was employing the Aztec version of diplomatic flim-flam which involved the heavy use of flattery and hospitality to give his opponent a false sense of security. If so, it didn’t work.
1519!
Whether this is true or false, it’s worth noting that the Aztec religion had long associated Quetzalcoatl with the year known to Europeans as 1519 A.D., the same year that Cortes sailed from the east to land at Mexico. The Aztec calendar was highly sophisticated and they had this numbered year vividly in their minds. This was a truly uncanny coincidence.
But before enjoying his hospitality, Bernal witnessed Montezuma having lunch and being served by a large staff of servants. Mind you, Montezuma thought he really was a god as did the entire population over which he ruled and so this lunch business was exceedingly elaborate and ritualized.
Here again, the words of Bernal:
“He was seated on a low stool, soft and richly worked and on the table was placed white cloth. Four very beautiful women brought water for his hands and towels. Four great chieftans stood near him with much reverence, never looking at his face. The men of his guard, who were in rooms near to that of Montezuma, never dreamed of making any noise or speaking aloud.”
The food on that occasion consisted of tortillas, a variety of meats and many different fruits all served with tankards of a frothy cacao drink which was mixed with chili peppers and mashed maize (corn). At the conclusion of the lunch, everybody in the room walked out backwards with heads lowered. After his meal, Montezuma smoked a mixture of herbs, “which they call tabaco”, packed into a tube made of gold. And then he went to sleep.
Incidentally, the cacao mentioned here was made with choclatl (chocolate), the fruit of plants native to Mexico.
“From the Halls of Montezuma…”
That famously is the first line in the United States Marine Corps Hymn. The music was taken from a piece by German/French composer Jacques Offenbach in 1867. The lyrics were added from anonymous sources and celebrated the victory of the U.S. forces at the 1847 Battle of Chapultepec, a hilltop fortress near the outskirts of Mexico City. In that battle, 90 percent of the Marine Corps troops were killed in action.
But, truth be known, there were no “halls of Montezuma” then. By the time the Mexican Army surrendered to U.S. General Winfield Scott, in 1847, Montezuma’s halls, if he ever had any, had already been wiped out for over 325 years by our old buddy, Hernan Cortes.
A ceremonial dish favored by the Aztec upper crust, certainly including Montezuma,was pozole —- a mixture of pork, white corn hominy, chili peppers, onions and broth.
Pozole
(You will need to get some dried ancho and/or guajillo chilies and 2 cans of white hominy))
You Can Do This:
Roast 3 pounds bone-in pork shoulder at 225 degrees (F) for 4 hours or more until the meat starts to fall off the bone. Then cool and remove the meat, placing chunks in a pot with the pan juices and water to cover and 2 cloves of garlic (chopped) one chopped onion, some cumin, a bay leaf and some salt and black pepper. Bring this to a gentle boil then cover, reduce heat and let simmer on low for one hour, adding a little water if needed.
Meanwhile, soak 5 or 6 of the chilies in very hot water for 30 minutes and then put them in a blender with some of the soak water and blend until smooth. (Remove seeds beforehand if you like. I usually don’t).
Add this chili puree plus 2 cans of drained white hominy with a teaspoon of chili powder and a half-teaspoon of cayenne to the simmering pork and continue cooking on low for another hour. If needed increase the heat level by adding some more cayenne or red pepper flakes.
Serve pozole in bowls with thinly sliced radishes and cilantro
Now, are you sitting down?
The Aztecs of Montezuma’s day didn’t have cilantro. They didn’t have radishes. They didn’t have garlic. Believe it or not, they didn’t even have cumin. All that stuff derives from around the Mediterranean Sea and has become very popular in today’s Mexico. Most significantly, they didn’t have pork. The meat used for a posole back then was either human flesh or wild birds. You heard that right. Human flesh. Pigs became a reliable food source in America only after Hernando DeSoto brought them to Florida in May, 1539.
So posole, while being a popular dish in today’s Mexico, is not the same posole familiar to the people of Tenochtitlan.
Good thing, too!
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Many thanks, BC
(PS: The follow-up line in the Marine Hymn, “to the shores of Tripoli” is the subject of a subsequent edition you won’t want to miss!)