November 2006 Lawrence Freeman: GOD & GOLD

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

GOD & GOLD

The fantastic tale of a few Spanish killers and thieves who stole an empire as told by one of the Aztec royal courtiers.


of

GOD
And
GOLD

A NOVEL BY LAWRENCE FREEMAN






OF GOD AND GOLD WORD TOTALS



INTRO 2475
DECLARATION 2499
MOTECAZOMA 4432
CEQUI 3060
FLOATING TOWERS 4333
LA MALINCHE 4828
TENOCHTITLAN 4227
NARVAEZ 2380
NOCHE TRISTE 2375
BACK TO TEOCHTITLAN 4251
NO MAS 3326
PRESENT AT THE BIRTH 3139
CAST ADRIFT 3855
RUNNING 2803
XIBALBA 2594
BISHOP 3632
CULTURE CLASH 3962
AUTO DA FE 5777
CENTAUR 4161

ENEMIES 4324
VOYAGE INTERRUPTUS 2697
RAGE 5384
CHAPTER HOUSE 4889
APOSTLE 4206
REQUERIMENTO 3187
DREAD 2362
RELACION 3788
A NEW PATH 3707
CHIEF JOSEPH 887

TOTAL 103676












OF GOD & GOLD CHAPTER BY CHAPTER REVIEW

INTRODUCTION 11
CARIBBEAN PASSAGE Before landfall
TESTIMONY OF NA CHAN KUCH, CAHAL
A native sees a landing
LANDFALL
Cortes lands

I DECLARATION Being a declaration by the heretic James 6
Paulus Ik, found concealed in his effects upon his soul
Being consigned to the justice of the One True God. RIP
The origin of Ik Chel and his time at the Calmecac
2499

II MOTECAZOMA & AQUILA Being the tale of how I became 16
A failed Bolom, met Motecazoma, and gained Aquila as a
father and joined the Cequi 4432

III CEQUI As a Bolom and a Cequi I am an arm of 10
Motecazoma. The omens and rumors of the landing
3060

IV FLOATING TOWERS OF THE GODS Being the 13
Testimony of Na Chan Kuch of the coming of the Shining
Crabs, & of myself who was sent to the landing, of which
there will be more later 4578
(Repeat of 1?)

V LA MALINCHE & THE MARCH Wherein the Spanish push 13
Further into Cemanahuac aided by the treacherous
Woman called Marina. The road to Cholula 4828

VI ON TO TENOCHTITLAN In which the Spanish and their 13
Native allies enter triumphantly into Tenochtitlan, capture
Motecazoma, and are masters in Mexico. 4227

VII NARVAEZ & THE RETURN In which Cortes leaves 7
Tenochtitlan to Pedro de Alvarado, goes to defeat Narvaez
And returns to find that there has been a massacre
2380

VIII NOCHE TRISTE Being the tale of the flight of the 8
Castilianos & the licking of their wounds. 2375

IX BACK TO TENOCHTITLAN Wherein Cortes returns to 13
Lay siege to Tenochtitlan & most of the inhabitants die
4251

X NO MAS Wherein is the death of the Aztec Empire & 10
The beginning of New Spain & the coming of the friars.
I get to know Marina 3326

XI PRESENT AT THE BIRTH In which I assist the 11
Castilianos, befriend La Malinche and help them found
A new nation until they murder Our Lord Chief Speaker
Cuatemoc 3139

XII CAST ADRIFT In which I escape from Tenochtitlan 12
& traverse the country they call Mexico and finally return
to my own village of Itzamal in the Land of the Deer, the
place you call Yucatan. 3855

XIII RUNNING FROM THE GAUPUCHINES In which 9
I flee from the Spanish, going ever deeper into the selva.
Virgen de Guadeloupe & the Battle for
Valladolid. 2803

XIV XIBALBA In which I discover what had been 8
Hidden from me and the great secret of the Maya.
Travel by river cavern to Tayasal 2594

XV Being the tale of Diego de Landa, Provincial of 12
Izamal & Bishop of Merida 3632

XVI CULTURE CLASH The rise of Heriberto 13
Lazarus and the preparation by the Provincial Diego
De Landa for an Auto de fe. 3962

XVII AUTO DE FE Being of the ceremony of the 7
Holy Office of the Inquisition 2410

XVIII CENTAUR Wherein Provincial De Landa taught 13
Me the meaning of the Spanish invasion of my land
Through the allegory of a bullfight. 4161

XIX ENEMIES OF DE LANDA.The Provincial makes 12
Many enemies and one friend. 4218

XX RAGE De Landa returns with me to Spain and 16
Ruminates over his alleged offenses. He formulates
His defense. 5384

XXI CHAPTER HOUSE Wherein Bishop Diego 14
De Landa and I arrive in the Chapter House in Spain
And work on his defense before the Tribunal of the
Council of the Indies. 4889

XXII APOSTLE TO THE INDIES..In which 12
Diego de Landa and I meet Bishop Bartolome de las
Casas and discuss differing points of view. 4206

XXIII REQUERIMENTO In which is examined 10
The vicissitudes of fate as applied to the Natives
And the Spanish. 3187

XXIV THE DREAD OF DE LANDA In which 7
My Lord De Landa experiences second thoughts for
The first time. 2351

XXV RELACION In which I tell why we wrote 12
Relacion de las Cosas and what it meant to the
Defense of Frey De Landa and for me. EPIPHANY
DE LAS CASAS-TRIBUNAL 3788

XXVI A NEW PATH After Epiphany. In which Jaime 9
is caught and tried before the Inquisition and
Finally tells his heart and vents his anger in full
Knowledge he will be burned for it. 3707

EPILOGUE: CHIEF JOSEPH’S LAMENT: The Spanish weren’t the only ones.




























Of God & Gold
A novel by Lawrence Freeman

INTRODUCTION
If it were not for the facts that can be corroborated six ways from Sunday, the story of Hernan de Cortes and his conquest of Mexico would be laughed out of the Court of Public Opinion as a pure fairy tale.
Say what you will of Cortes, that he was a liar and a manipulator, that he was sinful and greedy, that he was cruel and deceitful, that he was genocidal and treacherous, even say that he was a syphlitic, hunchbacked, half-crippled dwarf, all of which have been said, and may or not be accurate: his accomplishments would be impossible if they were not true.
Looking at it objectively, one might almost have to believe that Cortes was the right hand of God, if a God could be posited who was bloodthirsty, cruel, unfair, sinful, wicked, corrupt and immoral. Cortes is the law of the jungle brought to life. Survival of the fittest. The strong rule over the weak. To the victor went the spoils and dog ate dog, although sometimes dogs ate men.























What is past is but PROLOGUE
It was on March 12, 1519 that the people of an entire continent began to commit suicide. They did not realize it and it took them a long time to die. That was the day Hernan Cortes landed his fleet off the Yucatan Peninsula. Before Cortes, the Amerindian population ran between 11,000,000 and 16,000,000 souls, in about the same density as modern-day California. It was on that day that Cortes, inflamed by gold and idols brought back by the ill-fated expedition of the doomed Hernandez de Cordoba, set sail from the Santiago, Cuba, for the Yucatan. He had 11 small ships, 550 fighting men, 120 sailors, 16 horses, 18 hunting dogs which everyone assumes to be mastiffs but which were actually greyhounds, ten brass cannon, four falconets and sixteen arquebus.






















CARIBBEAN PASSAGE
They had been lucky on the voyage from Cuba. Although they had run into a relatively minor storm, the evil clouds, the crashing waves, massive marbled gray-green and white swells, a driving wind and a slashing rain had left the little flotilla storm-tossed and battered, but still afloat, although some of the occupants wished it were otherwise.
Captain-General Hernan de Cortes stood at the bow of the caravel that was his 'flagship' even though it was so unprepossessing. He turned at the sound of the footsteps coming over the deck behind him and was pleased at seeing the intruder. "Brother de Olmedo," he exclaimed, "I am glad to see you here on deck. Are you feeling more like yourself?"
Padre Fray Bartolome de Olmedo's face was thin and wan, so pale as to be almost green, but nevertheless he had a grim smile for Cortes. "It seems I am fated to live, my Captain, General, but I am not sure who it is that I feel like, and I am also not sure that I even want to live, but you could make up my mind for me."
"And how could I do that, Brother?" asked Cortes.
Fray de Olmedo summoned up another wry smile. "You could promise me on the Holy Book that there will be no more storms."
Cortes laughed in response. "I would think that you would have more luck asking your God for that promise."
Bartolome looked at the Captain-General. "Is my God not also your God, Captain, General."
Cortes was thoughtful. "I will tell you the truth, Brother. I am no longer sure that there is a God, and if there is a God, I doubt that he is in C'iuthan."
"Ah, Hernan, it would be well if you did not presume upon our boyhood friendship."
"So, my dear Brother, it is presuming upon a friendship to have an honest discussion about doubt. Are we not encouraged to doubt?"
De Olmedo laughed. "Just because I had to be born in Medellin but four houses from the residence of your sainted mother, it is not wise to say such things out loud, not even to me."
Cortes laughed in return. "Even Sor Maria de Valladolid, our teacher at the escuela convento would not deal a scourging for only a thought."
"Nevertheless, my Captain-General, it would be well for you if the Holy Inquisition did not hear of such things," said de Olmedo.
Cortes seemed unconcerned. "If they do, I am sure that it will not be from you, Brother."
"But we go to do God's holy work!" exclaimed de Olmedo.
The Captain-General was suddenly angry. "God didn't pay for my Commission, Brother, I did! Two-thirds of the cost of the expedition, I had to raise, for an expedition that will bring glory to Governor Velasquez, and not to me."
Fray de Olmedo wasn't too happy either. "You speak to me of money when I go to save souls."
Cortes became serious, even implacable in his belief. "Brother, in the end it is all for gold. Is it that King Francis ask for a percentage of the souls you save or of the gold I find?"
"His Excellency pays for the Brothers and the Padres to accompany you so that your souls may be saved as well."
Cortes lightened up and even laughed as he made his little joke. "No offense Brother, but I would rather have a few more strong backs than Priests who we must carry on our backs."
Fray de Olmedo was still serious. "But we must save the souls of the savages."
"Brother de Olmedo, why is it that you imagine that these savages even have souls?" asked Cortes.
Bartolome de Olmedo was angry again. "My son, you blaspheme against God!"
But now Cortes was into it, arguing to convince his old friend. "Come, Brother, it is common talk in Madrid and everywhere in Spain. These ... things ... are not people, these are no more than animals. Their only purpose is to serve us. Like our dogs. Like our horses.
These things are human sacrificers! They tear the hearts from living bodies! They are sodomizers! They worship devils! Where are their souls?'
'You have heard the tales of Pedro de Aguilar. Of all the men on his ship, the devils killed everyone but he and one other, and they were kept in cages to entertain the savages! Many, including many in the Church, say that these sons of Satan have no souls. They are not human."
Fray de Olmedo was agitated. "And I say they have reason and have souls but are merely mislead. I go to make the Gospel of Our Lord known to these lost ones..."
"... While I go to make their gold known to me." Cortes made no bones about what his goal was in the 'Indies.' He did not realize that he had blundered into a subject that was at the heart of de Olmedo's passionate soul.
Spain was an intellectual and litigious society which was not adverse to open debate, especially in regard to religious subjects, which this most certainly was.
The liberal voice of Bortolome de Las Casas was the fervent defense of the Indians, since the days of Governor Velasquez and the Caribes, and in this, de Las Casas and de Olmedo were of one mind, although de Las Casas and de Olmedo were to diverge on the treatment of the Indians and the approach to their conversion.
"May God forgive you, my son," said de Olmedo in what sounded like a pronouncement of doom.
Realizing that he might have gone too far, Cortes made an effort to placate the angry Priest. "Brother, you know that I am a believer, but even Our Lord said to render unto Caesar that which was Caesar's, and unto God that which is God's."
"Ah, so even the devil can quote scripture, but you have forgotten that Our Lord also said that God's eye was on the sparrow. Are these then less than a sparrow? At least de Olmedo said the last with a slight smile, and seemed light enough to at least continue the discussion which had seemed at an end.
"So, Brother, now you put me in league with the devil, while you put the devils on God's side?" Although said with an ingratiating smirk, Cortes was confused by de Olmedo's implacability.
"My Captain-General, let us for the moment admit to each other that neither you nor the Indians are on the side of the devil, but nevertheless, they are as children, and need our protection." Fray de Olmedo had turned, at least a little, conciliatory.
"Then, Brother, you do not believe with the learned scholar Juan Gines de Sepulveda, who believes that your Indians practice of human sacrifice justifies a holy war against them." The Captain-General didn't realize that he had stumbled over de Olmedo's pet hate.
De Olmedo's voice raised noticeably. "Sepulveda is a fool who rattles his empty head without ever having been in the Indies. It is more seemly that we accept the far wiser counsel of Padre Bartolome de Las Casas, who is well acquainted with the Indians and says that they are as other men. He even says that the Indians were as civilized as the Spanish long before they ever heard of us. They only need our guidance and instruction to be as we are." The Padre had erected his wall all over again.
"We will each tend to our flocks, Brother de Olmedo," surrendered Cortes, seeing that there was little that might be made of this disagreement.
"And when might we see these flocks, my Captain-General," asked de Olmedo.
"Landfall will be sometime tomorrow morning at Nueva Espana, God willing, Brother, and I must to my preparations." Cortes was relieved to be shut of the troublesome Priest with the stupid opinions that were no concern of his.
Cortes would follow his star and de Olmedo would have to follow his.

LANDFALL
On the day of Friday, April 21, in the year of Our Lord Fifteen hundred and nineteen, the flotilla sat anchored at the edge of a burnished turquoise sea with flashing wavelets, the intruding beige of the sand beginning to be visible beneath the hulls of the gently rocking ships. They landed on the coast near the Island of San Juan de Ulua on the day, month and the year prophesied as the time for the return of Quetzalcoatl. The immediate gifts of the Spanish were to be the instigation of a civil war, the murder of the Emperor Moteczoma, the looting and total destruction of the Emperor's city and the taking hostage of the new Emperor Cuatemoc. Their long-term legacy was to be much worse.
But that was the unseen future, and this day the longboats were lowered into the pristine sea and filled with soldiers bulky in their radiant breastplates, gorgets and cuirasses, carrying helms in the broiling sun.
The pikemen were in their striped jerseys and leather cuirasses, and the points and wicked edges of the vicious tall pikes glinted as they shifted on their backs as they climbed down the rope nets and jumped down the last foot or so into the boats shifting beneath them in spite of being held steady against the side of the ships.
Arrayed imposingly in the small boats, the crimson and reflecting metallic flags of Spain and Santiago flapped as the oarsmen pulled in unison, their voices raised in a rhythmic drinking song while the oars dipped and flashed, moving the boats forward toward the deserted beach on the fringe of the impenetrable green-ness of the jungle. The men feeling all the while as though there were hostile eyes upon them. Finally the sussurus as the prow of the boat pushed aside the timeless grains of sand as they grounded upon the shore.
The sailors leapt over the sides of the craft, splashing diamonds as they bodily heaved their conveyance up past the damp so the military contingent could debark with at least a semblance of dignity.
The ships stood menacingly off the coast with sails furled and banners snapping at the to'gallants. The men in mirrored armor and their greyhounds came ashore in longboats, while the fully caparisoned horses were ferried separately so they would not panic.
Having debarked, the brightly-polished armored men with the fore-and-aft boat-tailed helmets, mounted their horses and waved their swords, while the armored pikemen held the hugely unfurled blood-red and gold flags bearing the cross of St. James planted in the sand at an aggressive angle, set up the charged small cannons called falconets on their stands, ready to fire, and others took the long arquebus’ in hand as they arrayed along the surf line.
The brightly-attired Indians, clad in white cotton armor and brilliant feather headdresses and shields, emerged from the jungle carrying spears, double-edge wooden swords set with obsidian blades. They appeared suddenly from their shadowy forest hiding place, their women and children barely visible behind the towering trees.
They had heard the stories about the return of Kulkulkan and had come to see the face of a god.
The Spaniards waited until the warriors were close enough and then fired the falconets into the ground in front of the Indians, sending large, jagged plumes of sand up into their faces, while the crashing booms of the little cannons, the flashes, the clouds of gunpowder smoke and sand, the glittering apparitions of the riders on horseback galloping at them in more clouds of sand, spume blowing from the horse's nostrils, huge dogs gamboling and snapping at their hooves.
At the frightening apparition, the Indians fell on their faces to 'kiss the earth' in obeisance. With the commotion settling, Cortes spoke at them through a Padre he had rescued, Jeronimo de Aguilar, one who had been shipwrecked on the Peninsula some years before and had learned the language of the Maya while staying with them as their slave. Cortes cared little whether the Indians understood or not, so long as he had done his part, witnessed and ascribed to by the accompanying notaries.
The bandy-legged, barrel-chested, pinch-faced, wispy-bearded Cortes claimed the obviously already-occupied land for Spain and then spoke to the Indians of the wonders of the child-king Carlos I, and then formally announced the Requerimento, a rarely understood, excessively-legal document from the King of Spain that invited the Indians to become subjects of Spain and take up the One True Faith in peace, or war would be made upon them with fire and sword. It was only then that Cortes could accept them as vassals.
Fray Bartolome de Olmedo, again with the assistance of Padre de Aguilar to translate as best he could, then celebrated Mass and did a bulk baptism of the entire village, As was their custom, the new vassals presented Cortes with a food-tribute and twenty nubile young women, who, upon being baptized, were suitable consorts for Cortes' Christian Crusaders.
2475 words




TESTIMONY OF NA CHAN KUCH, CAHAL

Being the testimony of Na Chan Kuch of the FLOATING TOWERS OF THE GODS,
the coming of the Shining Crabs, & of myself, Ik Chel of which I will say more later

The first we heard of it was from a macehual, only a common man, who had come from Tlaxcala, from the tiny village of Cahal, on the shore of the greatest lake. He had consulted a sorcerer for the meaning of the thing he saw, and the sorcerer brought him to Motecazoma, seeking favor.

TESTIMONY OF NA CHAN KUCH, CAHAL
I had seen such a thing before, but from far off. Our priest told that it was a sign from the gods. Were the Priests right? Could this be Kukulkan, the one the Azteca call Quetzalcoatl, returned? I had to see.
They came from the east over the big water in great towers with the many white wings of a giant. They came to the sand in large, fat cayucoas that were different from ours. Then a monster came from the cayucoa. It was a thing such as I had never seen before and it was coming at me faster than a jaguar as I lay in the brush to see where I could not be seen. The thing that had come from the tower had four legs like a deer that moved so fast that they were a blur and made a noise like thunder. The beast had two arms, and its highest part had plates like a snake shining in the sun. It had two heads, this thing, one long head that snorted like a wild pig, and one tall head, and was strung all around with bells.
On the top of the tall head was a large, hairy face, like a monkey's, all encased in a shining helm and from the red hole came strange sounds like the roar of an angry jaguar.
On one flashing scaled arm there was a red hand, holding aloft a long shaft of lightning which he pushed back and forth. From the other flashing arm, another red hand held an upright pole from which fluttered a large red banner with a strange gold cross like our own five corners cross on it.
The thing came to a stop before me throwing clouds of sand, and the entire monster went up before me on two of its legs, the front legs pawing the air like a magnificent bird. Two of its black eyes glared down upon me as I groveled in the sand and prepared myself for death.
Then the monster turned and I ran for my life and saw no more.

All this the macehual told the Lord Chief Speaker, who became like he was mad. He screamed and broke things. He ordered the man thrown into the deepest prison, screaming that if he did not tell the truth, he and his whole family, even unto those still in the womb, would be flayed before his village.
Brought back five suns later, having been beaten repeatedly, the poor man swore and kissed the earth to his story, and Motecazoma finally had no choice but to let him go.
But he only let the man go, he could not let the tale go. He became obsessed with the ‘floating towers’, and that was when he called the sorcerers and astrologers and they told him of the omens.
Motecazoma then called together several of his priests and bid them go to the official in charge of the village and see if such things be true. It was not many days before they returned to tell of two towers or mountains floating on the waves of the sea, and also several strangers with faces of a strange whiteness and jackets of different colors fishing from a small cayucoa.
The Lord Chief Speaker became quiet upon hearing this, and retired to his quarters to be alone. When he came out, he ordered the finest craftsmen in the whole of the Cemanahuac to fashion gold and emeralds and turquoise and feathers into the finest examples of such things ever.
When they were done, he called five of his chiefs together and charged them to take the treasure and the rich finery of Tezcatlipoca, Tlaloc and Quetzalcoatl including the crooked staff of Ehecatl, and to say to the god, “Your Deputy, Motecazoma, has sent us to you. Here are the presents with which hen welcomes you home to Mexico.”
Motecazoma was so afraid of the vengeance of the gods that he had decided to send gifts and welcomes to them even before he knew who or what these strangers were!
Again it was days before these chiefs returned, and they were so terrified and confused that it was more days before any sense could be made of the tale they told.
This time they had gone out to the floating tower and they were lifted up onto it and there they presented all to the Commander, but were unable to talk to him because they knew not each other’s languages.
They told us that the gods came all arrayed and covered in great shining metal plates and with a metal cap on their heads, and so we came to call them the Shining Crabs.
Then the gods became angry, throwing the gifts down, they seized the chiefs and wound great metal chains around them, then came a great noise from a tree at the front of the tower, and all the chiefs fainted at the sound. Then the Captain of the gods somehow wanted them to make an exhibition, and had given the chiefs swords and shields, then made as if to fight them. The chiefs, in fear for their lives, dropped the weapons and jumped from the tower into the water, then into their cayucoas and paddled with paddles and hands to speed to the sand. Then they raced back to the safety of Tenochtitlan, where they collapsed in the presence of Motecazoma.
We could see that the Lord Chief Speaker was horrified. It was what he had always feared. The gods were coming to punish him because he had presumed to make of himself a god when he knew he was not one.
Moctecazoma ordered two captives painted with chalk and their chests torn open to sprinkle the chiefs with blood, for they had succeeded in their mission, and looked on the face of gods.
Motecazoma became like two people. One moment he was terrified, and the next cunning, swearing to keep the gods from Tenochtitlan. This lasted for days, until finally he called for the Cequi to come to him.
His eyes were sunken and feverish. His cheeks were hollow and a pulsing blue worm stood out on his forehead. His cloak was spotted with blood where he had bled after gashing his earlobes with maguey thorns in expiation to the gods. When he spoke to us we were frightened because of his look, by his speech. He made us give oath to Huitzilopochtli that we would be true on our lives and the lives of all of those who loved us and who we loved. He said we were the only ones he could trust. We were his Cequi, and we had proven our loyalty and our skill yet and again, but this was the most important mission we had ever been given.
We were to take many presents to the gods, and we were to make sure that these strangers were Quetzalcoatl and other gods, but more than that, we were to keep them from Tenochtitlan. Keep them from Tenochtitlan, he screamed. Keep them from Tenochtitlan, and worlds and kingdoms would be ours.
We would have done it anyway. We were creatures of the Lord Great Speaker. He had made us, and without him we would be as nothing, and could be as nothing again with just a single click of his tongue.
We set out at once, with much treasure and many porters, and we were there within days.
I told the story later, much later, when I was first put to the Question by the Holy Office of The Society for the Propagation of the Faith, that you know as The Inquisition. I escaped them that time, but it was not the last time I would face them. I wrote thus:

There were three of them, these foul-smelling black-robed pigs.
There was the hugely-fat toad of no hair looking like a river tapir that has eaten too much fish. His hooded eyes looked at me as if I were carrion on his plate, which matched his fellow, he of no flesh and too much neck, so that the ruff of hair about his skull and his huge beak brought a vulture to mind.
But they were all made to appear equals; it was the one in the middle who was the first among equals. He was the smallest of them, a colibri among pavos. Smaller than one of the people, he seemed but a shrunken child among the giant Spaniards. His face was sallow and his cheeks sunken, his nose was as a curved blade, and his lips thin and bloodless. His hood was raised, but I could still see the tonsured fringe on his low forehead. This poor unfortunate had no chin, and his skinny neck with a huge and moving apple protruded from his cowl as if it were a stick supporting his head. But it was his eyes that made the difference. They protruded alarmingly from his face like obsidian orbs. They glittered and glowed, shining balefully like twin black moons. It was as if they could see into my soul and they alone cast fear into me for the first time.
This one spoke as if he were biting off the words, speaking not to these others, but only to me! And in my own tongue! I had never heard one of them speak as one of us. They had always expected us to learn their tongue, but not this one. His face was the white of a sun-bleached skull.
I know enough of their evil tongue to know that they called each other Hermano, Fray and Padre, but I could see by looking at them that they could never be of the same family. They were a stork, a buzzard and a tapir.
I am Ik Chel, a warrior of Itzama and of the Quiche Maya, but also of Motecazoma and Tenochtitlan. All know that although I kiss the earth in respect, I fear neither the gods of the mountains nor the demons of the forests, nor even those who rule the realm of Xibalba, the dread underworld of the Maya, or even Mictlan, the place of death of the Azteca.
No man can stand against me. I am known to your people for my maquihitl has tasted of the blood of many of your best.
I know not of you in your black cloaks as if you were priests of Huitzilopochtli, and I care not. And if you know not of my name then it is not for me to enlighten the idiot children of fools.
To you I am either Ik Chel or James Paulus Ik, as Your Lordships would have me. It was said that I was baptized by Padre de Olmedo at the time of the landfall of Lord Cortes, although I knew aught what it meant until a later time. But I kiss the earth to all that I say and even if you are to tear my living heart from me, all that I say is as it was.
It was in Tenochtitlan, the mighty city you now call Mexico, a name offensive to us as it celebrates the despised dog people, the Chichimeca, that first I heard the fanciful tales of towers floating upon the great waters.
I did not believe in them then, nor did many of us of the peoples called together in the Great Plaza by the conch horn of the Great Lord Motecuzoma, he of the Aztec peoples. It was he who had sent the swift-runners to my Great Lord Totul Xiu in the name of the Aztec gods Quetzalcoatl and the dread Huitzilopochtli.
Belief or no, all soon knew that the floating towers and the gods were a matter of concern to all of the peoples, and so we set aside our allegiances and the Flower Wars to meet in Grand Council in the Great Plaza in Tenochtitlan, where we heard much that meant little and taught us nothing.
We heard from my brothers of the Land of the Deer, the place you call C'iuthan that intrudes on to the great waters. They kissed the earth that they had seen towers appearing suddenly upon the waters, but I knew that such could not be.
We who were of counsel to the Lord Great Speaker knew of the signs and prophecies of the return of the gods in this Year of 1 Reed. Everyone knew of the promise, but none truly believed it would happen. All except Motecazoma. We had heard and some of the astrologers had even seen swiftly moving stars in the sky with sparkling tails. We knew of the burning temples and the men with two heads. There were sorcerers who had heard the fearsome wails of The Weeping Woman, the legendary thief of children, going about at night, crying out for her lost people. We knew it all and cared naught, for omens were all about.
At the end there was nothing but that the Great Lord Motecuzoma had to send his most trusted to the familiar lands of the Tlaxcalans where it was said that the apparition had been seen. We were to see with our own eyes if the gods had truly returned and we were bidden to tell the Great Lord Motecuzoma of all that we had seen.
It was there on the shores of the great water that I first saw the winged temple that so many others had seen and that I had not believed. Here it was before my face, a great tower, there upon the vast waters, with white and red wings as a great bird, sitting as if it had settled there from the sky, as indeed it may have for all I knew.
Of the Shining Crabs were many. They were everywhere, there in the sand along the edge of the greatest lake. And to, there were great fat dogs that were attached to the gods by vines or ropes. These were not dogs such as we knew dogs that were little and fat and kept to eat. We could see that they were dogs; though they were dogs such as we had never seen.
They were enormous, with flat ears and long, dangling tongues. The color of their eyes is a burning yellow; their eyes flash and shoot off sparks. Their bellies are hollow, their flanks long and narrow. They bound here and there, panting, with their tongues hanging out. And they are spotted like an ocelot.
Sometimes it was that there arose a great din, the gods shouting and the dog-things barking and growling in some strange speech of their own. They all came from the floating temples in fat cayucoas that were much different than ours. On the shore there were already many tens of the Shining Crabs
I have no shame to say that we, the chosen of the mighty Motecuzoma, hid among the trees of the forest looking out at the fearsome sight, for who among us would stand upright in the sight of the gods?
It was then that there came into our sight a great beast such as we had never seen, a beast as from the depths of Xibalba. This water monster splashed through the places of little water, jumping from the cayucoa that had brought it from the floating temple. It came flying across the sands at us as some monstrous, shining bird. Six legs it had, two heads it had, two mouths and two voices, one of which screamed words and one which spoke as thunder, or as a great smoking mountain. All was cased in scales that shone and flashed like the sun, and hung with bells that sounded with each movement.
The four legs underneath waved and moved in and of the sands, throwing up great clouds as it attacked, just as if it could see into my hole in the ground behind the trees. It had spied me with its four eyes, the two smaller ones in the head on top, shining like coals, while the two huge eyes in front rolled, and a dreadful sound as from the throat of a smoking mountain came from the mouth with the huge teeth.
For me all these impossible things were but a long nightmare, it was more than my head could soak up and then the world disappeared for me.
All vanished as if it had never been, but when the blackness faded from my eyes and I again came back into my head. I took heed for my telling to the Great Lord Motecuzoma should I be allowed to live past my sight of the gods. I may never be believed, for I could not believe my own eyes, but it had two more legs that were higher, nearer to the top head, but on either side.
From one of these legs came a lightning fork that blinded as it moved, and from the other leg came a great banner of gold and scarlet, bright as any quetzal.
What I then saw I again could not credit, for before my eyes, like a vision of the night from the caverns of the underworld, this thing of light, this god come before me, was cloven in twain, and with a bound, two gods stood where before there had been only one.
Where had stood a six-legged beast now appeared a huge, four-legged thing, and another, but smaller, two-legged one. This smaller beast was shaped like a man, but all in shining scales, truly a vision of Kukulkan in man-form, but of a man of fire still gesturing with his lightning fork, and speaking loudly in strange tongues, while its other stood by, scarcely moving, and but for some snorts as from a wild pig, silent. The banner of scarlet and gold now set alone in the sand, and I was in awe at the strangeness of it all.
Nearby was a outlandish construction of some black metal, a long tube on wheels as if from a child’s toy, but larger, much larger. One of the gods touched a flame to one end of the tube and from the other end there came a huge flame and a noise like ten thunders. At the same instant, a huge tree far away with the thickness of two men burst asunder with a great crash and fell. A cloud appeared from the tube that had a pestilent odor, like that of rotten mud. This odor penetrated even to the brain and caused the greatest discomfort.
There was no hiding from the gods, and we threw ourselves to the ground before it. I shook with terror and awaited death, but such was not to be. Others of the shining gods came, and to my amazement there came a rough voice speaking the tongue of the Quiche Maya, badly and strangely to be sure, but my own sweet tongue nevertheless and not the harsher sounds of the Nahuatl of the Lord Great Speaker Motecazoma.
I knew that the gods could speak to me as they wished, and this brought me to my ease for the gods had spoken to me as to one of their own.
I then rose and in their Nahuatl tongue bid my brothers to rise as well, for we were obviously come into the realm of the gods.
The one speaking my tongue was small and ill-made for a god. Unlike the rest of the gods it was clad in the huipil, the loose, vibrant clothing of my people, its hair drawn up in a topknot, as was the fashion of the Maya, although unlike the Maya but in the fashion of the gods, much black hair hid the face. Near to this one was another of the Shining Crabs held fast to an angry dog-thing with many sharp teeth that made me afraid.
It asked who we were and what we did there. I told it in truth that we were the emissaries of the Lord Great Speaker Motecazoma who had sent us forth with presents from him to the returned gods.
What 'he', for they all seemed to me to be he-gods, asked then was most amazing to me - yet it should not have been. He said his MASTER had bid him to ask why the Great Lord had not come himself. It was not so much that he asked for the Lord Great Speaker, for it was fitting that the Lord Great Speaker himself should welcome the return of the gods. I carefully explained that surely the gods themselves would know that it was not seemly that the Lord Great Speaker should come until he should know as a great truth that it was the return of the gods.
But such was not my amazement. It was what he said of his MASTER! That the gods should have Masters? What manner of Master could a god have?
It was then that another of the Shining Crabs came forward. This one too was little and hairy and ill-formed and I knew aught of his rude speech, but from his tone and from what the other gods made of it, I knew that this was the Master. Surely this must truly be the Lord Quetzalcoatl.
I signed the bearers to bring forward the tribute that Lord Great Speaker Motecuzoma had sent for the gods. On seeing the lowly ones come forward with their baskets, it seemed to alarm the gods; although why gods should be alarmed I do not know.
One of the gods made exclamation and only pointed his spear at the foremost of our bearers, when there was a sound like the crack of thunder or the fall of an ageless tree, joined with smoke like that of a volcano issuing from the tip of the spear that made our lead bearer dead on the ground in an instant, masses of blood issuing forth from the ruin that had been the bearer's face. The other bearers threw themselves to the ground in terror.
Seeing that the naked ones were but bearing gifts that had been thrown to the ground before them, the gods once again sat their strange spears on the ground, but still held to them.
The gods held themselves aloof from the tribute, but instead the Master spoke to the Maya speaker in their own speech, and the Maya speaker said that they had come from a great king beyond the water and that they needs must meet with the Great Lord as their king had instructed them.
I could not understand what it was that they spoke, for how could gods have kings? I could not know how gods could even have Masters, and yet here they were, god and Master. I knew that it was not for us, as mere emissaries, to understand. It was only for us to follow the instructions that we had been given, and to see, to hear and to report all to the Great Lord Speaker.
But these ones had said that they would meet with the Great Lord Speaker, and I did as I had been instructed in Tenochtitlan. I said that our Great Lord Speaker had sent much tribute as proof that the gods were still honored, and that Motecuzoma humbly beseeched the gods, that now that they knew they were still honored, that the gods should be satisfied and return to their own sacred home.
Yet again, the god I had thought to be Quetzalcoatl barked at the Maya speaker, and that horrible one told me in flowery speech that the tribute was much appreciated and showed the allegiance of the great Motecuzoma, but they were bid by their own great king to meet and talk to The Lord Great Speaker, Motecuzoma and this they would do, for to return in failure to their king, would mean their death.
Death? Why would a god fear death? What could death mean to a god? All of these things made my head hurt, but what came through was that the gods were going to Tenochtitlan, and I knew that my Great Lord Motecuzoma thought that if the gods came to the Great Plaza, that the people would no longer look to him as their Great Speaker.
I told the Maya speaker that it would not be wise, or even safe, for the gods to move toward Tenochtitlan, and again I urged them to return to their own place.
The Maya speaker told Quetzalcoatl what I had said, and he became so angry that I trembled as a leaf and prepared for my own ignoble death, but the Maya speaker only said that my threats were as nothing to their power, and from what I had already seen, it was as he said.
Then came their Black Vultures to stand by the tall cross they had set up, and this one who was so much like our own black-robed, blood-soaked priests, spoke to us in such an wrathful way that I was sure we were to be guests in a flowery death, with our beating hearts torn from our cracked chests.
It was then that the gods turned to the tribute, and this was the first time they saw the magnificent calendar stone all of gold that the Lord Great Speaker had sent. It was also when some of the lesser gods had seen the small gold statues that the Lord Great Speaker had sent.
Quetzalcoatl and all of the other gods were well pleased by the tribute, and the Maya speaker told me that we would be allowed to return to Tenochtitlan so that we could tell the Great Speaker that the gods were exceedingly pleased by the tribute, and that he should prepare a great welcome for them, as they were coming to Tenochtitlan to be with him and to talk to him, bringing the brotherly greetings of one they called King Charles of Spain.
We had failed the Lord Great Speaker, but knew we must hurry to impart this news to him, but first we bade the chiefs from the village’s roundabout to keep careful watch upon the strangers and send runners to Tenochtitlan about the movements of the gods.
We were to soon hear that the gods had abandoned their towers to start the advance toward Tenochtitlan by going to Cempoalla

4578 words

































I
BOOK THE FIRST
DECLARATION


A Declaration by the heretic James Paulus Ik, found concealed in his effects on his soul being consigned to the JUSTICE OF THE ONE TRUE GOD.
Requiescat In Pace

I was named James Paulus Ik by those beings we came to call the Shining Crabs because of their shiny metal armor, and also by their Vulture Priests, called so because they were cloaked and hooded all in black, but in truth I am as my mother called me, Ik Chel.
I am Ik Chel of the village of Itzama in the Land of the Deer, a land that it is called Yucatan because when the Shining Crabs in their great Floating Towers first came to our land, The Shining Crabs asked one of our old people what name the place was called, but his head was old, and he had long since lost even the sound of the sea. He said only “yu’k’tn?" Which in the tongue of the Maya means "what is it?” but it was to the ghosts it was the name of our land, and so it became for all.
We are the Quiche of the Maya, and we were of the Quiche Maya before the Shining Crabs came, but then the beasts from far off were the Azteca of the Mexica and it was their Collectors of Tribute we feared, but now it is the Collectors of the Shining Crabs that come to us with false smiles and take the crumbs from the lips of children.
But not from the lips of my children, for I have no children. Neither do I have a mother or a father or brothers like my brother H’n, he of the bright face who ran like the Bolom, the jaguar. He is still forever, and so are all from my little village, for they became the spotted ones, and they died from the spotted sickness and the red sickness. Only I alone of all in Itzama still walk. Even the friend of my childhood, Golden Jade, has been stilled forever. We, who had always thought to be together, and to be old together with our children.
We knew not what these monsters would bring. We did not know they would kill us and be our new Masters. The Crabs boast of what they bring, their black Vultures that tell us of the ways of their new god, that think to make us bow down and kiss the earth to this new god, The god who hangs on a tree, as if a God could be hung on a tree. We go to their churches, for we must, but in our true hearts we know the old gods will come again, just as we know that their churches are built of the stones of our own temples and are raised over our own holy sites. We know that the Great and Terrible Kulkulkan will not forsake us forever.
I am forever broken that I was not in my village when the sickness came, that I was not there to die with them. I was at the Calmecac in Tenochtitlan, the great city that the Crabs call Mexico City, for it was indeed the city of the Mexica that is no more. I had been taken from my village by the Collectors of Tribute when I was but eight summers, to go to the city of the Azteca, the Capital of the Triple-Alliance, for they were to teach me their ways, and they would send me back to my village to be with my people, but I would no longer be of my people.
Such was to be my fate, but I went to it willingly for I was honored, even if it was by the Mexica. I was to go to a Calmecac in Tenochtitlan, a special school where I would be taught all that the sons of the highest of the Azteca were taught, and then I would take my place among the rulers. My mother, my father, my brother H’n and even my beautiful Golden Jade were there to see me go with the Collectors, and I could see that there could be no prouder people than those that I loved that day. I was to see them nevermore.
The Collectors were carried in their golden litters, but I was made to walk with the bearers, for I was not yet an emissary of the Lord Great Speaker of the Azteca. I was young and this was no hardship. There was much food, and there was the company of the bearers, some of them from my village.
It was a walk of many days, but I was to keep the memories I gathered there for all my life. I had never seen the purple of the mountains and the virgin blue of the skies. My home had always been the great forests, and I never saw the sky without also seeing the trees.
I was to see so many of the peoples that were of the land between the village and Tenochtitlan, and little did I know that I was to learn much of them over all of my life, and I was to see them from high, and see them from low.
I knew of the mighty Tenochtitlan, but the first look at it there in the Valley of the Mexica was like a dream. There was much still water; there in and out around many islands and bridges, not like the greatest turquoise lake of the world, shifting and moving with the rolling, little white mountains, but more like a turquoise mirror.
The multi-colored city lay in the center of the lake, served by four wide causeways that were the only way in except over water. And there were many canoes there upon the water, of many sizes, from those with only one person to larger canoes with thirty or forty people, and they were filled and more with many things.
There were all the colors of the many houses, big and little, like bright birds they were, and waving flags of feathers were everywhere. Beyond the lake lay the many fields of maize and other food, to better feed the people of the Mexica. The fields looking as if they had been combed by fish spine combs. In my village the fields were small milpas, but here, here the fields went on and on, surrounding the water and going all the way to the mountains.
We entered into the city along a broad highway that was filled with many people and many litters. For the first time I saw many people who were of a great heaving size, as if they were two men all put together, or maybe it was three. Often, they wobbled by, carried on their litters by eight sweating and grunting bearers. There was no one of my village who was of such a size, and I stared for a long time until I was cuffed by one of our bearers, and my head would not be right for many steps.
As we walked, we were beset by the many who carried huge baskets and plied us with peanuts, flowers, vegetables, and much more.
The peoples we walked among were of many nations and many different kinds and colors of dress, more than I had ever seen in all my life, and among them by two’s were knights of the Jaguar order, the fearsome Boloms, dressed in the skins and heads of their honors, carrying the stout staves that they used freely among the travelers, to keep order among the rabble. To us they were always respectful, miming a kissing of the earth to the Collectors as we passed.
We walked across many bridges over the waters crowded with jostling cayucoas poled by angry, sweating slaves, while their masters sat lordly and fat, like immense spiders surrounded by great loads of cloth and vegetables, and the vividly multi-colored flowers! Cayucoas so burdened with their oversize cargo that they were like moving islands coming into the city from the great estates that ringed the waters.
Everywhere were the terrible priests in their black robes made holy and stiff with the blood of the offerings to Huitzliopochtli, the Lord of Blessings.
I knew of the Flower Wars and the honor of the many sacrificed that gave their hearts and their blood so that the Azteca and their own Mexica could be a great people. Secretly I longed to see the procession of the honored as they wound their way up the side of the holy mountain to give themselves to the awful god that dwells at the top, as their blood flows in waterfalls down the sides.
At that young age I did not know how closely I was to observe this ceremony
There, before the great city, I was as a single grain of sand on a vast beach, lost among the many, very small with no meaning, moving with that vast river of the people as they flowed into the great city.
We came to a huge throng that was there by the last entrance gate to the city, where the Jaguar guards stopped everyone before entering through the massive walls, but the Collectors were waived through, with the Jaguars cudgeling back the rabble. This was a new experience for me, almost a celebration of my new high status-to-be, a joining of the Quiche and the Mexica. I cannot now tell of my thinking but I have memories of pride, and of fear, and of foolish arrogance, and of guilt for my own people.
All Cemanahuac hated the Collectors of the Azteca. Be they Quiche, or Olmeca, or Tlaxcaltecans, or Cholulans, or even of the Mexica, all hated the Collectors, but they respected and even feared them as well, for they knew that if harm came to the Collectors, or even if they were interfered with in any way, the Jaguars of the Azteca would come, and they would lay waste to the foolish ones, and their children, their parents, their brothers and their sisters, even unto their whole tribe. And I was to be a Collector, one with the power of life and death, one of the Azteca Collectors, though I be only a Quiche from the Land of the Deer.
Cemanahuac, the Land Surrounded by Water, had originally referred to the sanctuary the ancient Chichimecs found there in the middle of the five lakes that were really one lake. As their boundaries and ambitions grew, so did their definition of Cemanahuac, until it came to encompass even those lands beyond the Valley of the Mexica.
They had brought me all this way so that I could learn the magic of their ways. They, the Azteca, did little enough for the people of the Land of the Deer, and they took much from us, as they took from all of the peoples of Cemanahuac, but the one thing they did was to take some children of all the peoples away to The Great City to learn to be Collectors for the Azteca. Also to be held by them against the good conduct of their own people, and so the people would not hate the Collectors as much. But it did not matter even if the Collectors were of their own peoples, for they were also of the hated Azteca, and to the peoples they were the Azteca, and hated all the same.
All this I knew, and all this my mother and my father knew. And all this my brother knew, and Golden Jade knew, and even all my village knew, but we were all proud, even so.
Was I as good as the children of the Azteca who would be with me at the Calmecac? Was I even as good as the children of all the other peoples who would be with us? I did not know, but I did know that I must do well there in the Calmecac, because if I did not, I could never go back to my village in disgrace, I would have to take my life, as many of the children of the Calmecac did each year, and go to that special place that was for them alone.
I was but eight summers, but already mindful that I carried the honor of my village with me, and I was determined that I would not fail them and be obliged to take my life.
But such was not to be my fate. I did well among the young ones and advanced along with my age group, my calpulli. I had not been at the Calmecac for many seasons when it was made clear to me that the true path to glory lay not with the Lord Great Speaker’s Collectors, but rather with the men of the Jaguar Order, the Boloms. And so it was at the age of ten summers, that same time when my hair was shorn save for the side-knot and braid, that the true ambition of my life was born, not the weak acceptance of my fate as a Collector, but the fierce pride of a warrior. I had set my mind on the Jaguar Order, rather than that of the Eagle the Aquila, or the Arrow, because I knew that the Jaguar Order was the best.
Life at the Calmecac was made hard, to test the grit of the applicant. We always slept on the cold brick floor, although sometimes on a mat, and often outside on the ground. And our slumbers were often interrupted to embark on long midnight hikes into the mountains, with baths in the freezing mountain streams.
My fear for my lack of abilities was for nothing; because I excelled at all I was taught. Very rarely was I beset by the bundles of cane wielded against the lazy or the slow of wit. I excelled at the picture writing; the exquisite art of self-mutilation; the Poetry competitions; at the knowledge of the herbs and medications. At the design and building of the cayucoas that my mates used to compete against each other. I excelled at the ballgame of tlachtli. I was taught the dances, exercises and battle movements of the Boloms, and their skills. I came to know the spear, the cahitl; and the atlatl throw-stick, the sling, the war-club, and the bow and arrow. Best of all I was champion of the use of the deadly two-sided obsidian sword-axe, the maquahuitl, and the cotton armor, as well as the wicker shield. In these I bested opponents of all the Calmecacs, and even of the Telpochcalli, in the whole of Tenochtitlan.
At all these had I worked and studied until I was perfect, and at the age of sixteen summers I captained my age-group, and we all looked forward to being awarded the head and pelt of an adult male jaguar, the clear mark of a full Bolom. My life seemed cast until the end of my days when I would be wealthy and filled with honors.
But for the curse of my withered leg. 2499 words
















II
BOOK THE SECOND
MOTECAZOMA & AQUILA
Being the tale of how I became a Bolom, gained Aquila as a father & joined the Cequi





MOTECAZOMA AND AQUILA
It had happened long ago, soon after I began to totter around as an infant. My leg was struck by a snake, a coatl. It was a very small snake, a very pretty snake. I remember yellow and red and brown… that little snake probably should have killed me, but the gods brought forth my mother, my Nan, and she sucked out most of the poison. I recall pain, and swelling, and most of the leg being purple, but that all went away, and after that I did not consider it as serious, and my instructors did not see it as a drawback. I had long ago learned to compensate for the slight weakness, but to sight, the leg was just not perfect, it was slightly twisted and a little thinner than the other.
It was the Priest who was to perform the Ceremony of Reception who noticed it, and the old vulture was horrified. He ran to the Master of the Calmecac. It had to do with the Flower Wars that were the way of fighting of all the peoples of Cemanahuac. The death of the warriors on the field of battle was not the goal of the Flower Wars. The goal was the capture of the warriors so that they could be sacrificed in solemn ceremonies attended by thousands, the blood and their hearts of these brave and honored warriors burned to the greater glory of their gods, their bodily remnants tossed down the sides of the pyramids like offal.
The Priest was beside himself. If he could, he would have ordered the sacrifice of the head of the Calmecac himself! How could he propose anything less than a perfect physical specimen for sacrifice? What terrible price would the gods exact if such an imperfect specimen were to be offered? No, it was out of the question. Only perfection was allowed in a warrior, to do less was an insult to the gods. This imperfect specimen could never be allowed to enter the Jaguar Order, never be one of the pipiltin, the rulers.
And I was not. All this was told to me. In a moment of time my life was over. All that I had trained for; all that I wanted to be. All that I felt I was! All had been taken from me. What was I to do? How could I ever return to my village and take up the mattock and attack the soil, as I had been trained to attack the enemies of the Lord Great Speaker of the Azteca. My classmates became Boloms, and I alone remained in the barracks and mourned for my lost life.
But it is written that when one life is closed, the gods make a gift of another, and so it was with me. They came for me, two of the lordly Boloms, entering the dormitory where I lay, clanging the butts of their spears on the stone of the floor, and the ringing echoed throughout the hall.
“You!” one of them commanded. “You, the failed Bolom. You are to come with us immediately.”
“M-me?” I stuttered. “Come with you where? To what fate do you take me?”
“It should matter not to you, withered one, you are only to come with us.” He was annoyed.
“But how shall I dress? Who am I to see?”
“Stupid boy! It is the Lord Great Speaker who summons you, and it matters not if you are clothed or naked as when you first came from your mother, you will come with us now to see him as he demands!”
The Lord Great Speaker! The Lord Great Speaker wants me?” A vast cold dread took hold of my lower bowels and squeezed like a coiling snake. I knew I had failed him with my withered leg. He had heard. He had called for me. I was to be terribly punished. I knew I was not to be honored by a sacrifice, no, it was to be something that could not even be imagined. Things like being fed live to the strange creatures of the Lord Great Speaker’s zoo for the pleasure of the Lords and Ladies, the pipiltin, of the Azteca.
Brought, nay, almost dragged, for I was weak with fear, into the inner courtyard of the far-renowned House of the Lord Great Speaker. Color assaulted my eyes and noises assaulted my ears, but I had eyes only for the figure far away at one end of the courtyard, reclining on a golden throne and cooled by feathered fans, attended by women and courtiers.
The Boloms brought me forward and I prostrated myself trembling along the coldness of the tiles. Out of the sudden silence that settled over the immense courtyard came a voice, seemingly ordinary, that bore additional weight because I knew that it was the voice of Motecazoma Xocoyotzin, the True Great Speaker, the tlatoani, son of the Motecazoma Ilhuicamina before him.
He laughed.
“So this is the tadpole who would be a frog and swim in the grand pond of Cemanahuac. Rise tadpole. You may look upon me.”
Still trembling, my head bowed, I humbly rose to my feet, ready for what punishment the Father and Mother of the Azteca might decree.
“What’s the matter with the lad? He looks all right to me,” he asked of no one in particular. I did not reply. I knew he did not speak to me.
“It is his leg, tlatoani, it is less than perfect,” said the voice of a Priest.
Motecazoma looked me up and down. “He is tall and well-made, his features are not too repulsive for one from the Land of the Deer,” the ruler mused. “Is he then, deformed? Is his performance affected?”
The voice that answered was recognized by me as the Master of the Calmecac, the tlamacazqui. I still was unable to look upon the face of the Lord. “Oh no, Lord Great Speaker, his performance in all ways was better by far than his fellows. He was captain of his age grouping. He is a prize from the gods.”
Now that I was not being talked to directly, and did not seem to be in any immediate danger of having my head struck off by the nearest maquahuitl, the wonder of my surroundings finally came into my mind. It was all like a colorful dream of limpid pools, sparkling fountains, rushing waterfalls, trees, myriad flowers, the multihued costumes of the pipiltin that were everywhere. And in over and around all were the exotic and strange animals and vividly-colored birds such as I had never seen.
And the sounds! The tinkling laughter of the women; the rumbling voices of the men; the screeching and squawking of the birds; the growls and snorts of the animals and the splashing of water against tiles and rocks.
But through it all I heard the easy and pleasant voice that I knew belonged to Motecazoma Xocoyotzin. “Priest?” the Lord Great Speaker asked. “Why is he not then worthy?”
The wheedling, whining voice of a Priest on the defensive sounded jarringly among all the pleasantness of the courtyard. “It is the gods, Great One, his imperfection would be an insult to the gods.”
“How so, Priest?” questioned Motecazoma.
“In the Flower Wars, Majesty. If he is taken, his sacrifice would be unacceptable.” His voice was shrill with tension.
Motecazoma waved his hand negligently, as if dismissing the explanation. “Oh, well if that’s all it is. Commander?” He asked. “Where is my Commander?”
An enormous Knight of the Eagle Order in full regalia came forward and his deep voice came from beneath the Eagle’s beak. “Lord?”
“Commander Aquila,” said Motecazoma, “We have here a fledgling Bolom, if any Bolom could be said to be a fledgling. Do you think you could take him under your Eagle’s wing so that he could be blooded and not captured? After all, we would not want to insult the gods with his surpassing ugliness and gross deformities.” He said the last sneeringly to the Priest.
“Lord,” the Eagle Knight replied, with a smile in his voice, “I will keep him with me always, and the Lord Great Speaker knows this Aquila well enough to know that I am so filled with filth that any self-respecting god would not have me as a sacrifice, so he will be safe with me.
My heart lifted to the skies. I was to be a Bolom after all!
That is how I met the man who was to be my substitute father for all my life. His name was Quiaquiz, and he was a devout worshipper at the altar of Mayahuel, the very popular Goddess of Drinking. While public drunkenness was against the law, allowances were made in the case of the Commander, and it was only said that he was ‘tired’, being weighted down as he was with the responsibilities of his high office.
“To me, little Bolom,” the Commander said from the side of his mouth, beckoning as he bowed and backed from the courtyard. Outside, he turned to me. “How are you called, little Bolom?”
“I am Ik Chel, mighty Commander.”
“No, no, I do not ask your birth name, what were you called at the Calmecac?”
“I was proud as captain to be called Ni-ocelotl, mighty Commander.”
His broad brown face smiled from below the eagle’s beak as he put his hand on my shoulder, “Then I shall call you Ocelotl, little cat, and you will call me Aquila, for from this time you will be my honored little brother as I will be your honored greater brother. It shall be as the tlatoani has decreed, and where I go, you shall go, and what I do, you shall do.”
In that broad brown face and stocky body was the proof of his Chichimec ancestry. His pride in his ‘dog-people’ ancestry was great and oft proclaimed. Others might hide their peasant roots, but not the proud Aquila.
My heart was full. To have this great one as my elder brother! To have the favor of Motecazoma! It was almost more than I could stand.
“What do you know of women, little brother?”
I answered in all the wisdom of my sixteen years of barracks-talk. “What can any man know of women?”
Aquila roared with laughter. “So it is, little brother, so it is. But have you …been with a woman?”
I was horrified and I guess my face showed it. For one at a Calmecac to know a woman was to be caste out, the warrior scalp lock completely cut off, and disgrace to follow all the days of their lives.
Aquila roared again. “Well, little brother, it is time we introduced you to the House of Xochiquetzal, the Goddess of Flowers, Feasting and Pleasure, for as my constant companion, you will see many such houses.”
And it was as he promised. Many cacao beans flowed from his hands to those of the Mistress of the Flower House before the night was over, and for the first time I tasted of the pleasures of women and pulque, and the pain of the next morning. Such houses became familiar to me and my pride and my confidence in his easy acceptance of me as his little brother grew.
And my education in the arts of war was not neglected either, for during the day, I was sent back to the Calmecac, but this time as an assistant to the tlamacazqui, and now I was the one who now wielded the cane bundles on the backs of the lazy or the slow of wit. I grumbled with the other teachers about how the new classes were not as the old, but in truth, all were likely the same.
I was assured that I was doing well when I was introduced to the pipiltin, the great ones, by Aquila, and he said to them, “Ipal nonixpatloa,” ‘Because of him my face grows wide.’
I no longer slept in the Calmecac, but in the small home of Aquila built on long poles over the water of the lake and connected with a fragile bamboo cane bridge to the land that was easily disconnected and dropped into the water from the house side. The house was near to the west causeway and so easy of coming and going. I had a corner of my own and a mat, and while we had several slaves, I was still expected to do some of the chores, in spite of the fact that I was now pipiltin. Aquila had decided that while we were in Tenochtitlan, it was best for me to continue my training rather than attend the conferences that were called to counsel Motecazoma. When he sensed my disappointment, Aquila wisely took me with him to enough of the conferences that I came to agree with him, and knew that if he could have, Aquila would have rather gone with me.
But there came a time when Aquila called me to him so we could attend the conferences that were now dealing with an upcoming Flower War with the Tlascalans, an ancient enemy. It was time for a new education, one of diplomacy and negotiation, and of strategy and logistics. The Azteca were a people of War. Their Empire was a projection of their power. They were not ones to conquer and occupy, but rather to conquer and control by threat. They had shown their might and could return at any time, so their client states had to provide tribute and show themselves to be a truly co-operative part of the Empire.
The Tlascalans had never been conquered and were jealous of their territory and their status. In truth, the conferences made it clear that they could have been conquered by extreme effort, but Motecazoma needed them fractious and strong, eager to engage in the Flower Wars, and the Azteca needed the Flower Wars to provide the captive sacrifices for the hungry gods.
It had already been settled. The frightening and the interminable threat and gift exchange were over. There was to be a war. The reason was immaterial. In this case a minor trade dispute between the Tlascalans and one of the Azteca client states. The issue was where and when, so the Tlascalans and the Azteca held negotiations to set the ground rules. There were to be no surprises in the Flower Wars. It was one battle that decided all and there were rules to be followed and honor to uphold.
To Aquila went the honor of Commander-in-Chief, and it was decided to demand levies of the client states to amount to 30,000 men, a small army to be sure, but calculated to render up the number of prisoners that the Priests estimated were necessary to satisfy the gods.
Runners went out from Tenochtitlan to the towns and villages along the route of march to prepare their soldiers and porters to join the army.
As they gathered into the training grounds, most Tenochtitlan citizen-soldiers wore highly-ornamented thick, quilted cotton armor soaked in brine and perfectly effective as against sling-stones, lances and arrows. Shields and bucklers were seen as well as small copper axes, spears and maquahuitls.
It began very early one morning when Aquila sought to raise me, but found me already up and pacing. Sleep? He expected me to be asleep? On this, the morning of my first war? On the auspicious day had been chosen by the priests consulting the Divine Almanac?
We hurried together with many others to be at the main pyramid by one of the enormous stone snake heads that began the impressive staircases that led to the leveled top where the temples of Huitzliopochtli and Tlaloc stood waiting. It was here where the pipiltin were gathered to see off the arrival of a priest dressed as Paynal, the messenger of Huitzilopochtli, who had danced through the streets with a rattle and a shield calling out the citizen warriors, and they came, first by ones and twos. Then it was a trickle, then a river of soldiers dressed in their white cotton armor, and finally in a flood to gather there in the plaza before the great temple. It was then that the gigantic war drum began to sound. An exciting sound that caused the blood to race and an air of gravity to settle over the city, a seriousness that told that great events were happening. A drum that would sound all the time the soldiers were away, a thunder that carried throughout all the Valley of the Mexica.
I was there when the army formed up, and it was awesome. It seemed irresistible to me, and I could not imagine any enemy that could stand before it. But, of course, I am sure that the Tlascalans who followed their White Heron emblem must have felt the same.
The scouts were ahead, but at the head of the army was the imposing figure of Aquila, fully dressed as commander of the Eagle Order, and carrying the great conch shell war trumpet. He was joined by his captains, all richly dressed and walking proudly with Aquila at the head of their great army. Then came many priests sweating as they carried images of the gods. Behind them were the tribal contingents of Tenochtitlan, followed by those of Texcoco, then Tlocopan, this was the Triple Alliance, and they would soon be followed by those from the provinces as the army moved toward the chosen place of battle. In long marches, each contingent usually moved a day behind the one ahead, to avoid congestion, but not this time.
To me, it seemed like many men, all dressed alike, had decided one day to go out for a long walk. I was with the men from Tenochtitlan, including my old classmates who were now Boloms, and we were keyed up and ready. I was not allowed to be with Aquila at the head of the procession. There were in groups and cliques, talking and laughing as they walked. They stopped for ceremonies at each town where the locals joined the army and the town contributed provisions.
We were three days walking until we came to the appointed place, a broad valley on the other side of the mountains. There, our assemblage and the Tlascalans on the other side of the valley rested for a day until we were all ready and arranged.
It was then that Aquila came to me and we sat talking for only minutes.
“Oceotl,” he said. “You know of The Great Speaker’s charge to me that I keep you safe from capture and sacrifice.”
“Yes, Aquila. I am ready and I have trained hard in the arts of war. I will not let you down. Neither you nor the Great Speaker.”
Aquila looked grave as he handed a tiny obsidian knife to me. I could see that there were discolorations along the edge of the blades. “I will be right in the middle of the battle, Oceotl, and there are many of the Tlascalans who would try for me. It is too dangerous for you in your first battle. I ask you to fight hard, but to do it with all the men of Tenochtitlan, so the Tlascalans do not seek you as a special prize.
A tear came into his eye. “I give you this knife and tell you that you MUST not be captured. Motecazoma has decreed it. If the danger of capture comes, I beg you, my son, use this Viper’s Tooth that I give to you with only love. It has been stained with the venom of a certain coatl, a special snake that comes from many marches away. Only a scratch will send you into a peaceful, eternal sleep, and delivery to your special place with the gods. If you are taken the Tlascalans will count it a great victory and the Azteca a great loss, as it will be to me personally.
“My father”, I called him for the very first time, “I swear I will not be taken, and that I will take a Tlascalan for the thirst of Huitzliopochtli.”
“Do not be foolish, my son. Fight well, but a prisoner is not expected in this, your first fight. I ask only that you survive and that we get to go forward until the next battle and the next, for many, many battles to come.” He looked upon me kindly, then turned on his heel to return to his position at the head of the army.
Once he had taken his place, a great racket arose, as the men on both sides shouted insults, clashed weapons, whistled and beat drums, while black-robed priests from both sides danced obscenely between the lines, shouting insults and showing their culos to the other side.
After enough of this, the priests melted away, and Aquila signaled with his conch shell trumpet. The captains yelling orders, blasts on clay whistles, and the beating of drums underscoring the battle yells of the tribes answered the clarion call. First, the archers and the slingers let loose, and the hordes started forward. Then the spearmen hurled their javelins, and both sides ran full out at each other, a ferocious free-for all that was ended only when one of the sides’ Commanders was taken and the battle standard was captured. Retreat by either side was unthinkable, dishonorable and punishable by death.
It was my first battle. I had practiced much, but this was different. That was a sport, and this was chaos. There it was one to one combat and here it seemed like there were a hundred coming at you, and the howling and the clashing and the drums were what I had imagined to be Mictlan, the horror of the Underworld. Flashing spears and maquahuitls threatened every part of my body, and all my fevered energy was spent in warding them off, while taking a swipe at a passing Tlascalan only once in a while. I am ashamed to admit that I do not know if I struck any of the enemy, and later I was to discover only a couple of small rents in my quilting, although it was splashed with bright red blood.
This hell seemed to go on for days, although it was likely over within something less than an hour, when the Commander’s trumpet sounded again, and exhausted, we sank to the ground, almost in a faint, all our energy expended.
The healers moved amongst us, tending the wounded and counting the dead. Some of the lesser captives were sacrificed right on the battlefield, but most of them were put into wooden cages to be taken back to the Great Temple.
It was then that the messenger was dispatched back to Tenochtitlan, entering the city joyfully, with his hair bound up, brandishing his weapons, to be met with flowers, incense and the sound of trumpets, clay whistles and small drums, and the cheers of the citizens.
Aquila had taken one of the Tlascalan captains, and he walked beside the cage containing the valuable commodity that would add to Aquila’s honors. I was proud (and not a little relieved) to walk beside Aquila, while we both told lies to each other about our prowess. Although I was not sure that Aquila’s stories were lies.
We accompanied the captive back to Tenochtitlan, where the Tlascalan captain was placed in a small chamber near the Great Pyramid, to await his sacrifice.
What happened next was to amaze me all the days of my life, and tell me a great deal about Aquila.
I had already gratefully returned to our little house over the water and was luxuriating in the solitude and the quiet after the many days of the close society of the army. I heard the gruff voices of Aquila and another and heard their steps over the bamboo cane bridge, and the creaking as it swayed. Then there were on the floor outside the house, and when the brightly colored hangings were swept aside, a grinning Aquila stepped through followed by the captive captain of the Tlascalans.
“Oceotl, this is my new honored son who is named Tecozan, badger.”
The handsome captain grinned at me as well. “Your honored Father has told me of your bravery Oceotl.”
I was too dazed to speak.
Aquila laughed, “Ah, my Oceotl has lost the power of speech, Tecozan. We have discovered how to still the parrot.”
“But… but… how? What?”
“Nothing has changed Oceotl, tomorrow is the great day of the sacrifice, and Tecozan will be first among all. Is that not true, Tecozan?
“It is as Aquila says, Oceotl. I will have the immensely important honor of being first tomorrow to see and speak with the awesome god, Huitliopochtli.
I had risen from my place across the room, and walked toward the two grinning warriors. “But I do not understand. Are you not a captive? Aquila, is he not a captive?”
Aquila arranged his features in a rueful smile, which told me that been discourteous. “No. Oceotl, Tecozan is no longer a captive, he is now our honored guest, and is to be treated as such until he leaves our presence tomorrow.”
I was confused, and I guess that my face showed it. It was Tecozan who gently explained. “I still die tomorrow, Oceotl, but my death is but a door to Huitzliopochtli and my honor will live forever. Tonight I go with your honored Father to the House of Xochiquetzal, the Goddess of Flowers, Feasting and Pleasure, then I will eat of the buds of Peyotl, and I will know little of the events tomorrow, until I meet Huitliopochtli and he welcomes me to his realm. All is well Oceotl, and may you have as honored a death.”
“But not yet,” laughed Aquila.
“Not yet,’ laughed Tecozan.
Truly it was fine way to die. At the House of Xochiquetzal, nothing was spared for the honored guest, and I was a little less surprised to see others of the captives there, together with their captors. The finest of the women, the finest food and the finest drink, the finest of the smoking weeds, and as the dawn broke, the buds of Peyotl.
It was not long before we all went to the base of the Great Pyramid, with the Temples of Tlaloc and Huitzliopochtli on the summit. Black smoke from their great fires rose into the sky, and the rumble of the War Drum made the picture of the Holy Smoking Mountain complete.
By that time Tecozan was only barely awake, and knew not where he was or what was happening. Together the three of us, followed by a long line of others, climbed the great stairs to the summit and there we met six priests, each one of the black-robed men more filthy and blood incrusted than the other. As Aquila handed over Tecozan to the chief priest, sacred ritual bid him say proudly, “This is my beloved son,” and Tecozan had enough consciousness left to ritually answer, “This is my beloved father.”
Tecozan was then taken gently by the four priests taking hold of each of his limbs, lifting him bodily until he was spread-eagled over a low stone block. Another priest held his head while with one powerful stroke the chief priest slashed an obsidian knife sideways to cut the ribs and breastbone, then he reached into the chest to triumphantly rip out the still-beating heart, and raise it high over his head to the shouts of the crowd below. Finally he cast it into the flaming brazier while the other priests tossed the fountaining body over the edge to bounce and flop down to the bottom like a rag doll.
It was a fine way to die.
I was very proud of myself. I had thought to expel my stomach contents right there at the altar of Huitzliopochtli. It would have brought much shame to Aquila, but as it was it only left a sour taste in my mouth.
We left together and went straight back to the house to sleep. It had been a very tiring week, both physically and emotionally.
If that had been a tiring week, the next month was worse for both of us. I am ashamed to admit that Aquila and I spent the time in the worst debauchery I had ever heard of, and if Aquila seemed to thrive under the punishment, I was not used to it, and it affected me greatly. Maybe I drank and smoked too much to blot out the memory of my brother Tecozan. I know that it was not because of the battle, for indeed, although I was sore afraid, I was also exhilarated by the mêlée and longed to repeat it. But this time I thought I would be more used to the madness and confusion; more able to concentrate on my fighting skills.
I was to get my chance, but not in a way that I had expected.
Aquila came to me one day when my head was recovering from what I had done the night before. “I have watched you Oceotl, and you know that I am well pleased. But even more than that I have had many reports of your prowess in teaching at the Calmecac, and have talked to those that were with you at your blooding…”
“Aquila,” I began, and would have said more but for Aquila’s hand held up to stop me.
“… and there has been more, Oceotl, more from the women at the House of Pleasure. They too were well pleased.
I blushed with the red of blood, but could not think of a thing to say.
“For those reasons, Oceotl, and for another reason that you should be aware of, I have decided that the time has come for us to have this little talk.”
“Another reason, Aquila?”
“A most important one, Oceotl. You already know that Motecazoma is aware of you and has given you into my keeping. It is my task to fit you for grand tasks. You have been trained for it, and the Great Speaker expects them of you. So do I. It is my task, but it is also my pleasure. It is time for you to become as special arm of the Great Speaker, to strike at his enemies who are your enemies as well.”
“I am ready, Aquila. What must I do?”
“I know you are proud as a Bolom, Oceotl, and I would not have you forsake that Order, but rather would have you also join another. An Order that is known but to a very few, but one of those few is the Great Speaker. An Order that you must never speak of, to anyone, except to me, the other members of the Order, and, of course, the Great Speaker. Do you understand, Oceotl?”
“Aquila, I would die before I would bring shame to you or the Lord Great Speaker.”
Aquila looked on me with pride. “If I did not already know that, my fierce little cat, we would not be speaking. This Order is called the Cequi. You would be one of only twenty who would do this work.”
“Cequi, the few. It is right, Aquila. I would fill me with pride.”
Aquila clapped me on the back and roared with laughter. “Enough of this seriousness, my fierce little cat. Come with me and meet your new comrades.”
My new calpulli, my new group, the Cequi, awaited me in a large house that Aquila had wrested from the priests. The Cequi had come to the house in one’s and two’s, and all from different directions to avoid the eyes of those who were always watching, there in that mighty city of the Mexica. We met in the courtyard of the house, hidden from prying eyes. They were quiet on meeting, weighted down with the seriousness of what they were to do, of the mantle that had been placed on them. Later, we were to be as a family, with the leaders, the jokers, the nay-sayers, the annoyers, the radicals and the orthodox thinkers. We were all here, all contributing to the calpulli that was the Cequi.
We were old and we were young, the grizzled and cynical veterans who had seen so much of life, and the still bright-eyed young strivers who knew so little and wanted so much. Each of us took names by which we would be known among the others, and mine was of course, Oceotl, and I was made known to so many of the others that my head was swimming, there was Coatl, snake, Quahuehue, old eagle, known as ‘Ca’, Teacomanami, disturber, who became known to us as ‘Tec’, Temicli, the dreamer. Temi to us, Tlaloc, god of thunder, who we called ‘Lal’, Huitzilin, hummingbird, the hyperactive youth ‘Zin’, and many more, but those were only the names I remembered.
We were to train together, learn together, plan together, play together, think together so that each knew the other’s thoughts. We were to be as one, and to act as one, so that together, all of us would be more than just twenty men, even more than just twenty soldiers, we were to be a secret entity that was to be so much more than its components, our own special skills. We would be the Cequi. 5570 words






III
BOOK THE THIRD
-Cequi-
As a Bolom & a Cequi I am become the arm of Motecazoma












CEQUI
We were twenty because that was the smallest organizational unit that was recognized. We did not need a secret handshake. Or a secret password. Families do not need such things, and the Cequi became my family. Aquila was always with us, but he was not our leader. If anything other than a strong supporter, he was an advisor. We had no leaders for we were all leaders, but if one had to choose, then, immodestly, I must admit that myself and Ca were the leaders, the spokesmen for our calpulli. It was us who were chosen to meet with army commanders or captains when we were required.
To me, Ca was an ancient. He had seen some fifty-two summers, and had been at the Calmecac in the time of the 6th tlatoani Axayacatl after the reign of the first Motecazoma, Ilhuicamina. He had lived long past the span of life given to us by the gods, yet he lived on, an antique, his face an eroded landscape, his body a denuded tree, his bald pate a shining rebuke to the younger Cequi. He was old and had seen much of the Cemanahuac, the place and time where we lived. He was cynical and crabbed even beyond his years, and was looked upon with wonder, and not a little contempt by the bright-eyed younger Cequis who knew little, but wanted much.
I was not so full of myself as not to realize that Ca was looked to as a leader because of his years and his wisdom, while I was looked to because it was thought that I had the ear of the Lord Great Speaker, and was as a son to Commander Aquila. Ah well, we must all take our respect from wherever we get it.
We trained harder than we had ever in our lives, and all the training was as a unit. We sometimes fought each other as red and blue teams, or sent one or two to infiltrate an encampment of the rest. We went on extended trips to far lands, even into enemy lands. All to practice our growing skills. To go with nothing and to live off the land. To grow cunning as the pestilential fox. To best all comers, be they human or animal. Even braving the nighttime ghosts of the forest.
But all was play until that day in the time of the cold, when the freezing rain was sleeting down to slash and burn at our faces. We were called to House of the Great Lord Speaker, and this time we were not to go to the courtyard, but rather to the vast library where there were folios upon folios upon folios. All the knowledge of the past and the present. All the knowledge that the Black Vulture priests of the Shining Crabs burned because they thought them heresy and the works of the devil.
We sat or reclined on the mounded mats, and the brilliant sun streamed and flooded through the windows making patterns on the floor that, for fleeting seconds looked like one thing or another, while dust motes sparked and danced in the air. By then I was finally able to look upon the shining face of the Lord Great Speaker, and I could only then realize that he was but a man like other men.
Except that he had declared himself a god, the first tlatoani to ever do so, and mere mortal men were not allowed to look upon him without his permission.
He was the 9th tlatoani since Acamapichtli. The name he had taken was Motecazoma Axayacatl, ‘The Younger Angry Lord’ and he was thirty-four years old when he became tlatoani, but was already famous as a military leader. He was credited with forty-four conquests during his reign, so he was no stranger to the battlefield, or to the bedroom either, for he had over 1000 wives. Each day he was presented with over 100 separate dishes to eat from every day and his extensive bestiary, aviary and aquarium became legendary.
There are few alive today who have even seen Motecazoma and I have lived so long as to see most of my generation die long ago. Yes, I have seen the many paintings and drawings that the Spanish have made of our Lord Chief Speaker, but they are laughable.
They make him look like one of the Shining Crabs, a little like Tonatiuh, the Shining Sun, the mad, bloody captain of Cortes that was called Pedro de Alvarado, the one with the hair like coztic teocuitlatl, the excretion of the sun, which is what we called gold. They show him with thin, tiny lips, a straight nose like the blade of an ax, and long hair that fell to his shoulders. They even show him with a large mustache, and sometimes a beard. And they show him the color of a ghost, white, the color of death.
I knew Motecazoma. I sat with Motecazoma. I talked with him; walked with him; ate with him. I make cuitlatl, shit on their pictures. He was Aztec, not Spanish! Proud of claiming the ancestry of the Toltecs and of the legendary Aztlan. He was short like us, not tall like them, and his color was more brown than pink. His face was wide and his nose stubby and broad. Motecazoma was a god! And he was always covered in gold as a god should be. His hair was shaved except for the warrior’s side-knot, of which he was very proud. Among the people he wore the huge quetzal head-dress, but he did NOT have long hair that flowed to his shoulders.
He had gold plugs in his ears and lip, and a gold nose-plug like a butterfly. There were strung gold plates around his neck, thick gold bracelets on his upper and lower arms. Thick gold bracelets on his legs and gold sandals.
He was of us and we will not have them make him one of them. They killed him and now they would kill his memory as well.
We were called because Aquila had recommended it. The Empire of the Aztecs was an Empire only in the minds of the Spanish. In actual fact there was only the so-called Triple Alliance, Tenochtitlan, Tezcoco, and the lesser partner Tlacopan. I say so-called because in truth it was Moctecazoma’s Tenochtitlan that was all the Alliance. Apart from the Alliance, from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, there were only tribute states, kept in line by the fear of the enormously efficient and ruthless army of the Alliance.
The Aztecs had found a way of control that was relatively painless. They brooked no interference or rebelliousness. At the first signs of defiance, a massive Aztec force would appear to make sure that the mutiny was quelled before it became a full-fledged rebellion. It was a way, but as the tribute states continually writhed under the increasing Aztec yoke, it became progressively more burdensome on the Triple Alliance, and they needed to do something about it.
It was Aquila who came up with the idea that included the Cequi.
Superstition was a way of life among all the peoples of Cemanahuac. Astrologers, fortune tellers, magicians, sorcerers and wizards were the currency of everyday life. They believed in the evil eye and in goblins and demons. There was no distinction made between the religious and the secular. They were interchangeable and the ways of the gods and goddesses were intimately interwoven with the lives of the people. Every home, no matter how poor, had god statues. Everyone believed fervently in the powers and capriciousness of the gods, and in their ability to wreak vengeance and mischief. Later, these beliefs had much to do with the relations between Cortes and Motecazoma, but before the Conquest, there were the Cequi.
We settled on the tlilli and the itzac, the black and the white. White was the color of the dead, the mimihcatzitzintin. It was widely believed that the spirit, the nagual, what the Spanish Black Vultures called the ‘soul’, sometimes survived death, especially a violent death, or a death under tragic circumstances, or the death of a particularly evil person. Then there was the legend of Tezcatlipoca, the god of wizards, who took many forms, appearing as a shrouded corpse, as a bundle of ashes, groaning as it billowed along, or as a headless man with his chest and belly broken open, and sometimes just as a head that jumps out from shadows. And there were shape-shifters who could become animals or birds. Everything was possible and part of everyday life for the citizens of Cemanahuac.
The Cequi would become the night terrors for the enemies of the Triple Alliance.
We were sent to a town known as Ixylatl, near to the Land of the Deer. An argument had taken place between one of the Collectors, and a large family of some influence, when the Collector tried to take the younger son as tribute. The older son murdered the Collector and became defiant. The town had split into two parts, those who approved of the murder, and those who were terrified that the Aztecs would appear and take vengeance. The town and the surrounding area began arming themselves and building defenses, and the longer it went on, the more it spread through the countryside, until it could no longer be ignored.
It was a question of the army or us. They sent us.
We went separately, as pochteca, the traveling merchants of the Mexica, owing their successes to their god Yacatecuhtli. The merchants were the visible presence of the Azteca and were everywhere in the Cemanahuac. They were visible and invisible. The only ones who took notice of them were the buyers or the sellers.
Our work was started at night. We began by stealing children. At first it was those who were outside on some errand or other. We took them by stealth and into the forest where we killed them. It was hard, but our mission would save many lives and settle discontent.
Soon the whole countryside was abuzz with the disappearances.. It was then we began the tlilli and the itzac, the black and the white. We chose Totochtin, rabbit, the one we called Toto to be the white, and the rest of us would be black. He was dressed all in white, and white chalk paste was put on his face, so that he was all white. Toto was called rabbit because he was cunning as a rabbit, fast as a rabbit, and could freeze into invisibility. The rest of us were dressed all in black, so that in the night, we would also be invisible.
Then we arranged it so that Toto would be seen fleetingly on the edge of the woods by various people who were out at night.
Next we spirited Toto into the town, where he would appear to someone who was out alone at night, and then while that person was frozen with fear, one of us would creep up behind and hit him over the head, leaving him unconscious to wake up later and tell the story.
When the fog of fear had settled over the entire area, it was time for our real work to begin. We targeted the ringleaders of the rebellion.
If we could not immediately reach the agitators immediately, we were able to get their wives or their children. Even relatives were not safe. We killed with no mercy for the greater good, for if the rule of the Aztecs was threatened, there would be only chaos. We spent many hours in talking about whether what we were doing was good or evil, but we were always aware of the alternative. If we were to fail and the army were to come, how many more would die. And the army might destroy and burn the town, so what we were doing was really kinder. At least so we had convinced ourselves. After all, were we not the agents of the Lord Chief Speaker, Motecazoma? And was he not a god? How could we be wrong?
So we killed. And as the terror took hold, we became bolder. Children were kept inside their houses, women stayed with them, and men ventured forth only if absolutely necessary. So we started to go into the houses. We always attacked by night, and we were all in white with our hair and faces covered with white chalk paste. Sometimes the people fought, but not very often. Usually they were frozen with fear as we killed all in the family, trying to leave a very young child whose terrified story would spread more fear.
And we spread fear by day. In the pulquerias and the plazas, for during the day we were simple pochtecas and told interesting tales of far-off places. We told that the gods themselves punished those who resisted the Azteca and their Collectors, and soon it became prudent for all in the town to profess love and acceptance of the Azteca and their officials. Sometimes it took as long as two moons to rid the town of the dissenters, for they were either dead or otherwise silenced.
Aquila was pleased. Motecazoma was pleased. We became the secret agents of Motecazoma. We were his arms, and for some years we did his work and kept the peace in our own way.
And then in one day everything changed. Everything!
It was the day we heard of the ‘floating mountains.’
All peoples of the Cemanahuac had their superstitions, often the same superstitions. We still do. All had gods and all had omens. But there had always been gods, and always been omens. Volcanoes were omens, earthquakes were omens, storms were omens, lightning, eclipses, meteors, a deformed child, or even a deformed animal. Crop failures, droughts, floods, strange clouds… all could be omens, and omens of anything that they might be put upon.
All have heard of the ‘Eight Omens’, the omens that it is said foretold the coming of Cortes. We all know what they are. They have been repeated often enough, but they have been repeated by the Spanish, or by those toadying to the Spanish by this foolishness.
1. Ten years before, a shooting star appeared in the night sky, and lasted for a year.
2. The unaccounted for burning of the Temple of Huitzliopochtli.
3. A straw Temple was struck by a lightning bolt and burned.
4. A shooting star was seen by day.
5. A strange wind stirred up The lake of Tenochtitlan so that it boiled and flooded, destroying many houses.
6. The night wails of an invisible Weeping Woman crying, My children, we must flee far from this city,’ and ‘ Where shall I take you?”
7. A bird the color of ashes was caught on the lake and brought to Motecazoma
8. Men with two heads were seen who then vanished.
These omens are often cited as presaging Cortes, but I kiss the earth to tell that it is all lies. Yes, there were omens during the ten years before Cortes, but there were always omens. I could name countless others, and make up still more, nothing would matter. I was there at the time of these so-called ‘omens’, and I tell you that they were nothing but momentary topics of discussion. What made them ‘omens’ were the official sorcerers and astrologers, the advisors to Motecazoma. And the problem was not even them, for they were only telling the Lord Chief Speaker what he already believed.
Then there is the foolishness of Quetzalcoatl being a bearded white man. That was not the legend. Never was. Quetzalcoatl may be many things, he may even have been in the form of a man, but his face was never white. It was black and sometimes red, but the legend of the bearded white man is an invention of the cursed Spanish,
The problem was Motecazoma. Do not believe these others, they are fools and do not know. I was there. I was part of it, and the problem was Motecazoma.
He was afraid.
But he was afraid before Cortes.
He was afraid because he declared himself to be a god, when he knew that he was but a man. Just as all the peoples of Cemanhuac were superstitious, so was Motecazoma. How could it be otherwise? He was Chief Priest of Tenochtitlan as well as Lord Chief Speaker. If he was not a practicing believer, he could never have become Lord Chief Speaker.
He was afraid.
Afraid of the gods.
The gods displeasure at Motecazoma declaring himself a god.
The god’s revenge.
The revenge he was always waiting for.
The revenge that he knew in his heart would come one day.
I saw it.
I was there. Maybe it was even a kind of sickness, a sickness that was eating at his soul, his naqual. We could all see it, but what could we do?
It started with the ‘floating mountains.’ But this was not the first time that Motecazoma suddenly became terrified at some omen or other and gathered his sorcerers and astrologers to tell what it might mean, and this was not the first time that they prognosticated doom, for how else could their services be valued? There was always some disaster within the peoples that these charlatans could point to and say, ‘See? We told you so.’
So when the ‘floating mountain’ was first heard of, many of us were made to laugh. Not Motecazoma, and who were we to tell him otherwise?
So he gathered his advisors together and bade them tell him the meaning. Well, they did, tumbling enough obscure predictions to cover any possibility, up to an including the return of Quetzalcoatl. The seer who foretold that reminded Motecazoma that it was the year 1 Reed, the same year that Quetzalcoatl is said to have left, and the same year he prophesied that he would return. It would be good to say that everyone at once realized that this was the true prophecy, but alas, it was just one more in a torrent of possibilities.
That it was the year 1 Reed did not seem particularly significant. After all, 1 Reed came every 52 years, and it was observed and recognized mostly by the religious, but was of no real moment to the people.
Quetzalcoatl was not the chief god of the Azteca, he had been more of the Tolteca, who had replaced him with Tezcatlipoca when Quetzalcoatl was driven from the land, and he, in turn, had been replaced by the fearsome Hutzliopochtli and the companion Tlaloc.
That would all change. 3124 words





VI
BOOK THE SIXTH
-ON TO TENOCHTITLAN-
In which the Spanish and their native allies enter triumphantly into Tenochtitlan, capture Motecazoma, and are masters in Mexico.


After the terror of Cholula, where more than three thousand were slaughtered, the reputation of the fearsome White men preceded them, and we now heard that they were often met by delegations to join this embryonic rebellion against the hated Mexica, warning of planned ambushes, of which we set many; and all failed. The adventurous, foolish, Spanish, had braved heights, volcanoes, bitter cold, sleet, snow and freezing rain until they topped the mountains surrounding the capital to gaze upon the Valley of the Mexica and the shining capital of Tenochtitlan.
They were coming. All those who had been against the Azteca separately, they were now together, and the ‘gods’ were bringing them to us. They had climbed to the heights of the snow-capped holy mountains that surrounded the great city of Tenochtitlan and they now looked down upon us, while we looked up to them.
I had been born in the Land of the Deer, C’iuthan, but had been brought to Tenochtitlan when I was but eight years old, and have been here ever since. I had been raised as an Azteca and my ‘second’ father was an Aquila Knight and a member of The Lord Chief Speaker’s Council, and in time I became a Jaguar Knight, and also a member of the council. I now thought of myself as an Azteca, as did the others of the Council.
As they descended down into the Valley of the Mexica, our ‘ears’ told us that they were met by yet another traitor, Prince Ixtlilxochitl. He, who had always been envious of the Azteca, had persuaded his people to join forces with the Cortes, and marched out to meet the Spanish with his brothers and many of Tezcoca
Not content to be a traitor to Motecazoma, the Prince also became a traitor to the gods, and he and his brother and his mother became Christians, and they in turn convinced the rest of the Texcoca to become Christians. All this was frightening enough for the Lord Great Speaker, but to hear that his allies had become Christians and no longer recognized the same gods, was almost more than he could bear.
Motecazoma was so concerned with himself that he was no longer of any use to the Council, so we argued among ourselves, but we were not accustomed to power, that was what The Great Speaker was for. Some of us, including the brother of Motecazoma, Cuitlihac, and even his nephew Cuatemoc were for a full-out attack on all of our enemies before they came to Tenochtitlan. They had never fought an Azteca army, an army that the followers of these ‘gods’ knew and feared greatly, and there were not that many of them, maybe seven thousand or more, and we could have met them with a hundred thousand of our finest warriors. There still might have been time.
Might have been, but Motecazoma was able to pull himself together enough to tell us he would not allow it. He was fearful for his city. He was fearful for his people, but more, he was fearful for himself. He still thought that this was Quetzalcoatl coming to take back his city, and he trembled at what might be done with him. He would not allow these gods to be angered any more than they were. So he would not allow it.
He would not allow it! This trembling lack-wit would not allow it! Oh, if only he were not Lord Chief Speaker! If only we had a Lord Chief Speaker who could lead us against these foreign invaders, these cruel usurpers who knew not our gods, and care not for the lives or souls of The People.
We had obeyed too long. We knew not what else to do. If only we had known then… But we did not, and had not the power – or the will to do other than what we did. Compromise.
Again we sent a delegation to the Cortes, and I was among them. We arrived, bearing sumptuous gifts as always, voluminously expressing our regret at the events in Cholula and denying any part in the conspiracy while congratulating the Spanish on accomplishing vengeance for the treachery of the Cholula.
This was somewhat different in that we tried to use one of our own to tell the Cortes that this was Motecazoma come from Tenochtitlan to welcome him as a brother, and that now that they had met, the Cortes could now return to his own place. But such was not to be, for the traitor Chiefs that were with the Cortes knew that this was not the Lord Great Speaker, and the lie was dismissed without comment.
It may seem strange to some that the we never realized that the presentation of ever-richer gifts to the gold-crazed Spanish to get them not to come to Tenochtitlan, was like giving tidbits of meat to a hungry dog in hopes that he will go away.
It was strange, and we of the Council knew that it was foolish, but we did it because Motecazoma willed it, and we could not go against him. Motecazoma still believed that these were the gods, even though we tried to tell him differently. Not only did he believe it, but some of the others of the Council also more than half-believed it. As I have already said, The People were superstitious and the gods had always been a very real part of our lives. It was a hard habit to break.
The proof was that after one of these useless meetings with the Cortes, and as we were returning, our path was crossed by an old drunken man who screamed at us that what we did was useless, for the gods would destroy us and destroy Tenochtitlan, and we should stop trying to go against the will of the gods and stop the foolish tricks. Then he staggered away, and half of the delegation knew him only as an old drunk, but the other half saw his as an appearance of one of our gods, as a supernatural warning. I thought it was a trick of La Malinche, and maybe it was, but if so, it worked marvelously. They rushed back to Motecazoma to tell him of the miraculous occurrence, and no matter what the rest of us said, he believed it and became even more miserable.
Imagine the picture that we saw before us. We were suddenly alone! All our enemies, and even out allies were now against us, but even so, if we had the leadership of Motecazoma, it might still not have been too late, but such was not to be.
Now they were all against us, Cempoalteca, what was left of the Cholulteca, the Tlaxcalteca, and the Texcoca. The Otomi had been scattered and demoralized by the ease with which they had been destroyed. The Cortes felt confident about moving forward, with the only cloud on his bright horizon being the loss of the Cempoalteca who were terrified of entering the Azteca capital, after having insulted Moctecazoma’s collectors at the beginning of all this.

TENOCHTITLAN I – THE ENTRY
We still had the ‘ears’ with the White men, and we were getting reports all the time. Things had changed. Until all the tribes had either been defeated or had joined the horde that were arrayed against us, it was the White men who pressed forward and their native allies who had to be reassured. Now that they faced this, the greatest city they had ever seen, it was the White men who became afraid. Their allies were eager for revenge. Now it was the Whites who had to be told that this great city was only a ripe mango to be plucked from the tree.
One final time Motecazoma sent us forth to promise the strangers all the riches of Cemanahuac if only they would go back where they came from. As before, the Cortes answered that it would be impossible for him to leave without presenting the regards of his own king to our king. He told us he would appreciate our hospitality, that the Whites were coming as friends, but they would come no matter what obstacles were put in their way. We understood this as he no doubt intended, as a threat not to oppose him.
With the Spanish and their allies before him, an invading force that had overcome every obstacle and trick he had placed before it, Motecazoma knew he was helpless in the hands of the gods.
He had become an old man. He was terrified. Unable to concentrate his mind on any one subject because he was haunted by his demons, his mumbled speech became disjointed and hard to understand. Among ourselves, his Council called him an old woman, and some of us would have taken stronger action to stop him from surrendering, but we were not united.
In this matter, he was strong. We begged him, we pleaded with him not to let the Whites enter Tenochtitlan. The Lord Chief Speaker’s brother, Cuitlihac, was the angriest of all, and had to be restrained as he warned Motecuzoma, “I pray to our gods that you will not let the strangers into your house. They will cast you out and overthrow your rule, and when you try to recover what you have lost, it will be too late.”
Others of us on the Council agreed with Cuitlahua, but Motecuzoma had decided, and nothing we could say would change his mind. He was resolute that we must welcome these Whites as friends. It was his belief that when the ‘gods’ entered the city, the ‘sickness of the gods’ would go away. In a time when so many thousands had already died, and so many more were sick and close to death, this was a powerful argument. His nephew Cacama, who agreed with the Lord Chief Speaker, was sent with a high delegation to welcome the Whites, while Cuitlihac was sent to await them at the Palace.
The entering march became almost celebratory as it was accompanied by multitudes that had come to see the strange apparition that was marching on their capital. Certainly it was celebratory for the Spanish, while it was different for others.
The splendid elegance of the capital that was surrounded and intertwined by lakes and canals, simply overwhelmed the Spanish who were as country folk on a visit to the city. It was incomparably beautiful. Our capital of more than 150,000 people gleamed with the whiteness of stucco and vibrated with the primary colors of feathers and flags.
The invaders were now just some seven thousand, of which less than four hundred were Spaniards. We had sacrificed more than that in just one festival! At the dedication of our mighty temple of Huitzliopochtli, we had sacrificed 20,000 captives in just four glorious days.
I still do not understand it. I know why Motecazoma did it. I was there. I saw it all. Why did we allow it? We knew that he was mad with fear, but to just throw aside all the defenses of the city and invite the enemy inside the gates? And to welcome them as friends, when we knew that they were enemies? This was a world we never made, but Motecazoma was The Lord Great Speaker, and we could do naught but obey. It is still beyond comprehension that the gates, drawbridges and forts that protected entrance to the city, were thrown open to these interlopers, but so they were. It was so incomprehensible that we heard from the ‘ears’ that the paranoid Spanish were coming riding in full armor with weapons close to hand. They thought they might be entering an elaborate trap.
Would that it were true!
The force proceeded in battle formation with Cortes at the head, slowly and warily into the heart of the city, to be met by our Motecazoma, ashen of face, trembling, but arrayed all in gold and finery and in all his pomp and ceremony.
Cortes dismounted, threw the reins to a page, and together with Marina, he advanced to meet the emperor. Heavy gold chains were hung around Cortes’ neck, and more lavish presents were laid before him. Motecazoma humbly welcomed him, saying that he was only guarding and protecting the city until the return of the gods, as was foretold. And now he had come, and he was welcome. Cortes replied that they had come as friends and that there was nothing to fear.
It was the lowly Marina, abandoned child, slave of the Maya, given as a gift to the aliens, who spoke for her Captain to the mighty lord, and at his orders the Spanish horde and their allies, were ushered through the streets to be quartered in a temple that had been built as the luxurious palace of Motecazoma’s father.
It was Motecazoma who, at Marina’s suggestion, thereafter referred to Cortes as Malinche, the Captain. Finally Malinsi, who had become Marina, was La Malinche.
Deploying his forces throughout the palace as if expecting attack, Cortes confined his men to their elaborate quarters and entertained Motecazoma in his father’s palace with tales of Spain as interpreted by La Malinche. Some of us were less entertained by this intruder who had made himself and his men so at home in our capital.
That night, the Spanish celebrated their arrival in the capital with a thunderous discharge of artillery, just as terrifying to The People as it had been to us the first time we had heard it, but more so to the people of Tenochtitlan, who had only heard volcanoes and thunder to compare it to.
In the morning, Cortes, with a few of his close entourage including La Malinche, returned Motecazoma’s visit. Entering into the world of unimaginable splendor of the Royal House, Cortes, through La Malinche, attempted to convert Motecazoma to their Christianity, and, although failing in this effort, Motecazoma acknowledged the Spanish king as the lord of all, and Malinche as his ambassador. The Council was even more horrified at this, a complete surrender. What could be worse? We were to find out soon enough.
For four days little was different, the Spaniards amazed at the richness and variety of the city, until Cortes and La Malinche, accompanied the Motecazoma and his entourage, including the entire Council, climbed the great teocalli, a pyramid crowned by temples.
There, we entered the temple of Huitzilopochtli, Smoking Mirror, and this butcher of thousands was seemingly horrified at the inner temple, the walls coated with dried blood, bleeding human hearts on the altar, the priests dressed all in black, their robes stinking with congealed blood. I know that Motecazoma had thought that all these signs of devotion to the gods would please Cortes, and we were all confused by his reaction. After all, he had shown himself to be no stranger to death.
Then, right outside the very temple, Cortes, through La Malinche, implored Motecazoma to turn from his satanic idols to Christ. Now it was our turn to be horrified, and we hurried to tell Cortes that these gods had led the Mexica to become a great nation, and that surely he, of all, must understand that. For the first time I could see that the serpent of doubt had crawled into The Great Lord Speaker’s mind about Cortes being a god.
Right before our eyes we could see Motecazoma regaining something that he had lost, and the dawning realization that he had made a monstrous and unforgivable mistake.
He drew himself up and said that if he had known Cortes would speak against them, he never would have permitted the Captain entrance to the holy places. Cortes angrily left, leaving us with our gods to seek forgiveness for allowing the gods to be profaned.
In spite of the tension, Motecazoma was wary of this powerful force that he had allowed to be installed in the very center of our great city. Approached by Cortes, The Lord Chief Speaker reluctantly gave permission for the Spaniards to erect a chapel within their quarters, not realizing that the Spanish intended that the chapel would require extensive modifications of the structure.
Did the wily Spanish suspect something beforehand? Is that why they asked to build a chapel? All we know is that the treasures of Motecazoma’s father had been carefully sealed up behind a solid wall, and the cursed Spanish somehow discovered it, then sealed it up again, and kept it secret. When they came upon a huge hall filled with gold, it must have seemed as if these were all the treasures of the whole world..
After a week in the capital enjoying the lavish hospitality of the Motecazoma, the Whites and their allies remained on the alert, fearful of an Azteca attack. Cortes was surrounded by rumors. Rumors told to him by the chiefs of the allies and by La Malinche pointed to signs that the Mexica, loathing the Tlaxcaltecans as inferiors, were thinking of raising the drawbridges, trapping the small force within the city.
Now fear took hold of Cortes. We knew that his ears were filled with whispers that Moctecazoma was planning behind their backs and was ready to spring the trap. Cortes was vulnerable, trapped there in the midst of the great city with his small force. He was becoming desperate. What could he do, where could he go? Having done this almost unbelievable thing, he was in the position of ultimate vulnerability. He had to make a bold move to solidify their position before they were toppled into the abyss.
We just didn’t know what he might do, but what he did was beyond even our imagination.
We did not know until later, but Cortes, a man used to audacious moves, hit upon the one move that might keep him safe right in the heart of the capital! How could he have come to such an amazing path? It was a solution born of desperation. He was afraid of being trapped where he was. He was afraid of retreating to the coast because it would look like flight and destroy his credibility with his allies. He was afraid that Governor Velasquez would send a superior force to drag him back to Hispaniola in chains, and he was finally afraid that this great prize would somehow be stolen from him.
His chance came when he received a message from Cholula that a nearby Mexica Cacique had murdered two Spaniards. We heard of what happened even sooner than he did, because the Cacique sent the head of one of the fallen Spaniards to Motecazoma, and when we saw it, we trembled at what might happen.
The Spanish commander at Cholula immediately took fifty of his own men and several thousand of his native allies to punish the impudent chief. In a close battle, the Spaniards triumphed but lost eight men, and we were told that the captured Indians blamed the murders on Motecazoma under torture. The fact that we received the head seemed to be proof of the Indians’ charge. All this was relayed to Cortes, and he saw it as evidence of Motecazoma’s hostility, when, in truth, we had known nothing about it.
Asking for an audience with Motecazoma, Cortes arrived with a full company of his men. Through La Malinche, he confronted the Lord Chief Speaker, and in spite of his denials and responsive angry threats from the Council, the armed force took Motecazoma back to their quarters. Along the way, rumors circulated that the White men were kidnapping the Tlatoani, and an angry crowd gathered to obstruct the procession, but Motecazoma, resigned to his destiny, called out to them to disperse, that he was only visiting friends of his own accord.
We were shocked that he could be held a prisoner in his father’s former palace, but the Spanish allowed us to see him, and as best he could, Motecazoma conducted his affairs there under guard and under Cortes’ thumb, with La Malinche by his side, translating continually so the Spanish could be completely aware of what he was actually saying.
When the errant Mexica Cacique and murderer came to submit himself for the justice of the Lord Chief Speaker, Motecazoma was given no choice but to turn him over to Cortes. Condemned by the Captain to be burnt alive in front of the palace with fifteen of his chiefs and his own son, the Cacique complained that they were only acting on the orders of Motecazoma.
His worst suspicions confirmed, and always an instinctive actor, a paranoid and insanely angry Cortes ordered our Tlatoani shackled there in front of his helpless Council, held at bay by hundreds of the Spanish with guns. He might have executed Motecazoma right then, except La Malinche stopped him by saying that without The Lord Chief Speaker as a hostage, what would stop the tens of thousands of Aztecs from falling on them.
Suddenly brought to his senses, Cortes had Motecazoma unshackled, telling him that he did not believe the lies of the treacherous Cacique, who was now dead and could not repeat his allegations.
Although a prisoner, Motecazoma was outwardly treated with the utmost deference and respect. Allowed to climb the teocalli for devotions, he was nevertheless guarded by 150 soldiers and told that in case of any attempt to escape, he and all his Council would instantly be killed! There were other ‘outings,’ always under similar orders, and always with a return to his captivity.
One plot to rescue the Tlatoani was instantly broken with the assistance of Motecazoma, who desperately wished to avoid massive bloodshed, and the plotters were all imprisoned and then executed.
Soon, Motecazoma called together as many Caciques as could be contacted on short notice, assembled from all over Cemanahuac and announced to his astonished Caciques that they all now owed loyalty to the Spanish king! To enforce this new state of affairs, Motecazoma sent his collectors, now accompanied by Spaniards, to receive tribute in the name of the Spanish king!
Flushed with his success, Cortes finally made a move that put them all in dire jeopardy.
Attempting to bring these new members of the Spanish family fully within the umbrella, Cortes began the process of converting them to Christianity. Approaching Motecazoma, he and La Malinche asked that the great teocalli be given over to the Spanish for Christian worship.
By now there were others among the Spanish who understood much of what was said in Nahuatl, but for nuances and meanings, for the free flow of conversation, La Malinche was unparalleled.
For the first time, the Lord Chief Speaker refused and became angry, saying that what was asked would bring the gods and all the people down on their heads and that he would not allow it, the people would not allow it. Cortes, alarmed, used La Malinche to explain that there must have been an error in translation, and then backed down enough to offer a compromise. Instead of taking over both of the temples that topped the teocalli, he asked only for one.
Their request granted, the Spanish took over and transformed the temple of Tlaloc, installing a crucifix and an image of the Virgin.
This assault on their religious beliefs suddenly brought a serious chill to relations between the Spanish and The People.
It began with Motecazoma, who now refused the society of his jailers, but who summoned them and told them through their beautiful interpreter that they must leave the country for their own safety. In fact, he threatened them by telling them that he had only to lift his finger for every Mexica to descend upon them in fury. He also said that the only reason that the Spanish had not been torn to pieces was because he had not allowed it, but that the patience of The People was at an end.
This sudden about-face on the part of Motecazoma frightened Cortes, who knew that what was said was true. He had only to look at the faces of the Council to see that there was no love for him there. Rather than explode as he would usually done, Cortes became suddenly acutely aware of their vulnerability if they lost the cooperation of their hostage. Cortes said that he would be happy to leave, but were unable to do so because they had no ships. Motecazoma soberly agreed to give them craftsmen and workers to help them build the ships to leave. Cortes had to agree, and now the Council became excited. It was just possible that Motecazoma had been right in the way he had handled the situation. If only the Spanish would go without bloodshed…
Now it was obvious that the garrison was in a state of siege, and each man slept in armor, with his arms by his side, and the cannons were all charged and covering the approaches. They were on the knife-edge of disaster.
And there were threats from a new quarter.
Less than six months had passed since Cortes landing, but in that time he had completely subjugated a rich and powerful nation with 600 men!
4227 words


















VII
BOOK THE SEVENTH
-NARVAEZ & THE RETURN-
In which Cortes leaves Tenochtitlan to Pedro de Alvarado, known to us as tonatiu, goes to defeat Narvaez and returns to find that there has been a massacre.

We learned about it before Cortes, Our ‘ears’ brought the news almost as soon as it happened. More of the Castilianos had landed, many more, and they had come in the towers that floated upon the sea.
We rejoiced at the news. Cortes and his men could leave us in these new towers; there need be no more excuses. We should have realized that all would not be that easy.
When we told Cortes, we had expected that he too would rejoice, but that was not to be. His face went dark, and many furrows appeared. He went from us, calling his Captains to him, and when they returned he spoke with great seriousness to Motecazoma. He said that others of the Castilianos had come who were not his friends, and that he would have to go to defeat them.
This was news that caused great consternation among the Council, but even more rejoicing. If a force this large had come after Cortes, then it must be critical. The Castilianos would fight each other; maybe they would kill off each other. Maybe these new Castilianos would take Cortes away with them. At very least, Cortes would be weakened. It was a good time for us, but it would not last.
In another example of Cortes’ luck, six prisoners from Narvaez’ landing force had been taken by Cortes’ men who had been left at the original landing place on the coast. Forced to leave by the incursion, these men brought the prisoners to Cortes in Tenochtitlan.
Cortes immediately freed and apologized to the prisoners, saying it was all a terrible misunderstanding. The ex-prisoners responded in kind, telling Cortes that Narvaez’ men knew of Cortes’ amazing success and were hungry to join him, but were being forcibly prevented by Narvaez, who was bent only on carrying out his orders to capture Cortes! The men could see little profit in such a mission, and would gladly take any opportunity to revolt against Narvaez.
Such was Cortes’ talent. He would often do exactly the opposite to what others might do, and would win through by surprise.
We later found out that Cortes had sent a peace-making messenger to Narvaez, saying he was willing to share in his success, but Narvaez was not softened. However his men heard the tales of riches and the soft life that Cortes’ men enjoyed, and they were put under a spell.
The ‘ears’ told us that when Narvaez had reached Cempoalla he made no great secret of his hate for Cortes, declaring him a traitor! He further vowed to free Motecazoma, and restore him to his throne! We were excited by this news. Finally there was some hope.
Apprised of this new information, Cortes, leaving the command of the garrison in Tenochtitlan to Pedro de Alvarado, resolved to go out to meet Narvaez.
We had anticipated that all the Castilianos would leave, but that was not to be. Cortes told Motecazoma that he would have to leave for a while to take care of the situation with the other Castilianos, but that he would be back, and in his place he would leave his Deputy, Pedro de Alvarado, the one the Aztecs called Tonatiuh, the sun, because of his cornsilk hair, and he ordered Motecazoma to obey Tonatiuh as if he were Cortes, or else he and his Council would all be killed.
He warned Tonatiuh not to trust any of the natives, to keep the men ready and alert, and the cannons trained on the approaches to their garrison. He told him again and again that they should always expect attack and be ready, and we could see Cortes was of two minds. He did not want to leave, and he was afraid of what might happen when he was gone, but he had to go because of this new challenge.
He brought together all of the Council, and told Motecazoma and his Council that he was holding all of us responsible for the behavior of the Mexica, and if any of his Castilianos were harmed, that all of us and everyone in our families would answer for it.
He made ready to leave but insisted that Tonatiuh take a solemn oath that he would let no one take advantage of him, and that he would keep strict control of the city until Cortes returned.
Tonatiuh knelt on one knee and took the oath.
Cortes took only half of his own men, and with 266 Castilianos and departed, leaving a city that seemed to be on the edge of revolt.
Good to his oath, Tonatiuh kept the city in an iron grip for about fifteen days after Cortes had gone, and we had heard nothing of the events on the coast.
It was our time for the fiesta of Huitzliopochtli, and a delegation of city leaders came to Motecazoma where he was a prisoner, and asked permission to hold the 10-day festival.
It angered me and made me burn with shame that Motecazoma turned and asked permission of La Malinche, “Please to ask the god Tonatiuh to hear me. It is almost time to celebrate the fiesta. It will last for only ten days, and we beg his permission to hold it in the temple patio. We merely burn incense and dance our dances. There may be a little noise because of the music, but that is all.”
When the day of the fiesta arrived, Motecazoma said to Tonatiuh, “Please to hear me, my lord. We beg your permission to begin the fiesta of our god.”
Tonatiuh replied, “Let it begin. We shall be there to watch it.”
On the evening before the fiesta, the women came into the Sacred Patio between the teocalli and the palace where Motecazoma was being held, to make preparations, and they carefully made a statue of the terrible god, Huitzliopochtli. While they were so occupied, the Castilianos came out of their palace in full armor and weapons and passed among the women, examining their faces one by one, and then they went back into their palace.
The next morning, we were watching from the roof of the palace because Motecazoma had been refused permission to attend. The young warriors who had been honored by being chosen to dance filed into the patio. The dancers were completely without weapons and were led by our great captains and bravest warriors, and they began to dance with all their hearts, in tribute to our great god Huitzliopochtli.
In the middle of a song, the Castilianos ran forward in full armor with all their swords, spears and shields. They closed off all the gates and passageways to the patio and posted guards so no one could escape. One ran and struck the idol in the face while others ran across the floor to where the drums were being played, where they cut off the arms of the drummer and hacked off his head so that it rolled across the floor.
Then they attacked all in the patio, slicing, slashing, striking and spearing. They cut off heads, sliced men in half, spilled entrails out onto the floor, so that the killers and the killed tangled their feet in intestines as they ran. The Castilianos allowed no escape; they killed no matter where the dancers tried to run and screams and blood filling the echoing streets, as we watched the Castilianos looting the bodies, leaving our stricken people to avenge the best of their nobility.
Rivers and pools of blood flowed freely and splashed the walls until all were dead while we watched in horror from the roof of the palace and could do nothing.
About six hundred of the city’s finest had attended, literally covered with gold and precious gems, and were only dancing when they were unmercifully slaughtered while Motecazoma cried, “Aiyee! Aiyee! My lords, my lords! What are you doing? They have no arms. They have no arms.”
There has never been a satisfactory explanation of the event, but at the time a red-faced and sweating Tonatiuh screamed that he had intelligence of an uprising to be led by those in the square, even thought there never was any evidence presented, and the looting of the bodies looked to be simple violent robbery. I kiss the earth that we in the palace knew of no such plot against the Castilianos, but the truth is that there were things that I still do not understand.
The loudness of the drums and dances could have been a signal to those outside the patio.
But the screams of the carnage did not go unnoticed outside the patio, and a great cry went out, “Mexicanos come running! Bring your spears and shields! The strangers have murdered our warriors!” There was an immediate response as masses of armed warriors swarmed into the patio, attacking with javelins and arrows that settled like a cloud over the Castilianos as they fought their way back into the palace where they took refuge.
It was strange that the armed warriors appeared so quickly. When we had gathered the warriors it sometimes took days. These things were strange, but we of the Council and even Motecazoma had no part and knew nothing.
The Castilianos shackled Motecazoma hand and foot, and then began to shoot at the crowd with cannon, small guns and iron arrows.
For hours, a huge crowd boiled before the palace, mourning and shouting threats and rage, raining arrows and javelins against cannon shots and the metal arrows. Many died, but even more came to replace them until it was as if the entire city was there, led by Motecazoma’s brother Cuitlahac.
At sunset, Motecazoma was forced to the edge of the rooftop to calm his subjects, and said, “Mexicanos, Tlatelolcos, I am the lord Motecazoma, and these are my words to you. We must not fight them. We are not their equals in battle. Put down your shields and arrows.’
“I tell you this because it is the aged who will suffer most, and they deserve your pity. The humblest classes will also suffer, and so will the innocent children who crawl on all fours, who still sleep in their cradles.’
For most of this event our Lord Chief Speaker, who had been the greatest of warriors in his youth, trembled and was afraid, as not even the women of our city were afraid, but at the last; ah, at the last, he seemed to regain something of his power, and made a kind of plea to his people.
“Therefore your king says, we are not strong enough to defeat them. Stop fighting, and return to your homes. Look at me Mexicanos, they have put your king in chains, my feet are bound in chains.”
From the crowd there came such a roar as I had never heard, and with it a new hail of stones, arrows and javelins. There was a cry, “Who is Motecazoma to give us orders any more. We will no longer be his slaves”, and they yelled and fought all the harder.
Tonatiuh had forced Motecazoma forward to pacify the people, but when he failed, an enraged Tonatiuh slit Motecazoma’s throat and threw him over the parapet down into the crowd below. The crowd howled for Castilian blood in revenge, and the treacherous Castilianos retreated back into the palace, dragging the Council with them.
For seven days the people howled at the closed gates of the palace, then the city went strangely quiet. The Aztecs stood guard on the palace, they could not get in, neither could the Castilianos get out. We of the Council were no better than the Castilianos, we were hearing nothing from the outside, and we did not know what was happening. If we had, I like to think that things could have been different. What we did hear was rumor or dreams. The people had torn up the bridges. The causeways had been closed. Great gaps had been opened in the pavements and they had built a whole series of barricades. They built walls and roadblocks obstructing all the roads and streets of the city.
Cortes returned. He had left with 266 Castilianos, but he returned with 1200, for he had won over the new men, and was stronger than ever.
Maybe fortune favors the brave, as it is said, but it can also turn in an instant. Cortes’ return to Tenochtitlan was very different.
They were allowed to enter the city unmolested. To this day I do not understand it. Why did Cuitlahac allow it? I never did find out, for he was dead before I could ask. Maybe he wanted to trap Cortes and all his men within the palace. I do not know what was in his mind, but Cortes was allowed to join his men inside the palace and there was great rejoicing, until Cortes was told what had happened when he had been gone.
I had never seen Cortes as angry. He cursed Tonatiuh. He had conquered Cemanahuac! He had won through every obstacle that had been placed in his way, and now this fool had endangered them all, trapped them inside this huge and hostile city. The hostility that he met and felt, he reflected back toward the dead Motecazoma, and he ruminated on the deceitful conduct of the Emperor, real or imagined. He was enraged, and he was frightened. They had killed their best hostage, and the all rest of us did not have the currency of a single Motecazoma. Day and night they fought and they argued.
In all the time since the slaughter of the fiesta, not one person had passed through the gates until Cortes. There was no food, no exchanges, and no news. The Castilianos were all cut off from everything, and there was little that could be done.
Except get out. Out of the palace. Out of the city. Maybe out of the Valley of Mexico, and if needs be, back to Hispaniola. But that was for the future. First they had to just get out of the palace.
2380 words













VII
-NOCHE TRISTE - THE RETREAT
Being the tale of the flight of the castilianos and the licking of their wounds












Meanwhile, the rebellion bubbled, and then when Cortes attempted a bold assault, announced by cannon, the people erupted, and it seemed as if the entire city had taken up arms and were intent on the total destruction of the Spanish and their allies. A single trumpet call to arms assembled all the Spanish forces at their assigned posts to be met with volleys and volumes of missiles from the surrounding buildings.
Darts were projected from the surprisingly efficient atlatl, sling-stones, and arrows rained on the beleaguered defenders, who met the onslaught with massed fire that drove them back time after time. On they came, climbing over the fallen bodies of their comrades, while burning arrows set fire to the wooden parts of the palace. A sudden human wave assault opening a breach in the stone wall, but a battery of heavy guns sealed the breach.
Night brought some respite from the attacks, but none to an amazed Cortes, who had never seen such fierceness on the part of the Indians, in spite of the fact that La Malinche told him that the Mexica had always had a fierce reputation as fighters.
By dawn’s light the attacks began with renewed and even increased viciousness.
Cortes attempted a sudden assault, but the sheer numbers defeated every advance, and in desperation that Spanish set fire to hundreds of buildings, but to no avail. Finally they were forced to retreat to the garrison where they spent the night listening to the taunts and catcalls of the surrounding Mexica, threatening to sacrifice the Mexica on the altar of Huitzilopochtli.
Even Cortes had suffered a severe hand wound. He had underestimated his enemy and had pushed them beyond their endurance.
Whatever the truth, the streets were at least momentarily clear, but the Spanish were still ill prepared to fight their way through the entire city.
For several days they stayed, constructing three moving ironclad towers on wheels which could be pulled along by the Tlaxcaltecan auxiliaries, while filled with musketeers; more or less primitive tanks.
So began the egress. When they reached the canal, the bridge they would have used had been demolished, so they left the towers and hurriedly filled the canal with rubble from ruined buildings, all the while harassed by the Mexica.
Crossing the canal, they continued on until they reached the next canal, where a similar effort ensued, and so on, for seven canals, until a broad path had been cleared, each of the seven renewed bridges guarded by heavy detachments.
The Mexica then sued for negotiations, and La Malinche tried to parley, but they were only a ruse, and the hostilities continued, and three of the bridges had once again been closed and were in the process of again being destroyed. A furious cavalry charge opened the route once more, and the Spanish found themselves fighting along the entire route, continually beset by the furious Mexica as the Spanish fought their way through so that there was a path cut through the throngs from the palace. As night fell, the Indians melted away, and the Spanish were left in possession of the route.
They left at midnight, carrying what treasure they could, the ‘king’s fifth’ carried separately. Some of the troops so loaded with treasure that they could hardly walk. They took some prisoners with them, the two daughter of Moctecazuoma along with several of the nobles, and the Tlaxcaltecans were distributed equally among the three divisions. They carried with them a portable bridge.
They were attacked and harassed all along the route, on land and from canoes in the water, regardless that it was night, over broken places filled with rubble, through fordable places, some wading, some swimming, many drowning, weighted down by their stolen treasure. They fought all through the night utilizing artillery and cavalry, and their rich leavings, abandoned during the flight, distracted their enemies.
Many were killed and left behind, but Marina and many of Cortes’ valiant cavaliers came through, and they broke from populous places out into the country, where Cortes attempted to reform them. Then, with little resistance, they occupied a large, stone-built religious site where they could rest.
Cortes said he lost only 150 Spaniards and 2,000 of the Tlaxcaltecans, but another of the party claimed 1170 Spaniards and 8,000 Tlaxcaltecans lost! Both are likely inaccurate, and a more credible figure is 450 Spaniards and 4,000 Tlaxcaltecans. There is no dispute that all the prisoners died.
Stretched beyond the breaking point, it seemed as if fortune had finally turned against the Spaniards. Although still a formidable force, they had lost the momentum that had carried them from the beginning, had lost their cloak of invincibility. Now they were isolated, deep in enemy territory, a wounded, shaken and exhausted assemblage, without the power that had kept them safe. Their firearms and artillery had all been left behind in their headlong and ignominious flight, and their arms now consisted of swords, their decimated cavalry, and a few damaged crossbows.
The Mexica did not deign to follow the Spaniards, devoting themselves instead to cleaning and fixing the depredations wrought by the Spanish, and to sacrificing the prisoners that they had taken over the route of March.

THE RETREAT
The Spaniards, carrying their wounded and led by their Tlaxcaltecan guides, took a circuitous route to the north, continually harassed by following bands of Mexica, derisively calling them Teules, gods. Starving, reduced to eating the horses that collapsed on the road, abandoning their hard-won treasure mile-by-mile, driven beyond endurance, soldiers dropped lifeless on the road.
This torture had lasted a week, until they reached the heights overlooking plains stretching out towards Tlascala. They also overlooked the ancient pyramids of Teotihuacan, their origins lost in the mists of time, two huge ones supposedly dedicated to the sun and the moon, and many smaller ones, all arranged along avenues facing the points of the compass and situated on a plain called ‘the Path of the Dead.’
Climbing out of the Valley of Otompan, the scouts told Cortes of an enormous army, led by Moctecazuoma’s successor, that was waiting for them on the other side.
Drawing his depleted force together, and utterly without any alternative, he led them in an attack now called the Battle of Otumba.
Met by the enfolding hordes, in their thousands, and in their tens-of-thousands, and even their hundreds-of-thousands, Cortes’ men disappeared in a snowfall of the white-clad Mexicans, but it was the masses of the badly-led Mexicans, pushed and battered from behind, that broke upon the rock of the Spaniards. Charging, always charging, they killed and killed, until Cortes saw the Indian commander, and with his slicing and thrusting their way through, killed the warlord and scattered his guard. Their panic spread through the Mexica, and, pursued by the blood-crazed Spanish, they melted away like a blizzard in summer, leaving the field to the victorious Spanish in the midst of the 20,000 Mexica dead.
They moved on to Tlaxcaltecan territory and were still warmly welcomed, even though they brought news of many Tlalascan deaths. They recuperated in Tlascala, but became aware that the countryside was still dangerous for them, although Villa Rica was still secure and the Totonacs friendly.
It was a far cry from being Master of the entire country. Many of his men now wished for a return to Hispaniola and an escape from the debacle. But Cortes, even in the depths of a serious fever, had already resolved to retrace his steps back to the Mexica capital!
You have to wonder what drove this man. Having been teetering on the edge of defeat for months, and then finally falling, what drove him on? But he had seen his future as a wealthy and powerful man and felt it was within his grasp. To return to Hispaniola would have been to return as a ruined criminal, and this Cortes would not do.
Once again his oratory was wielded against the faint of heart. To move one more step toward Vera Cruz would be to reveal weakness to their enemy and the Mexica would be on them like wolves in a sheepfold! Their Indian allies were still ready to stand with them; did they want to show them weakness? All they needed to do was to wait where they were for reinforcements and then they could easily recapture all that had been lost. Having at least quieted the grumbling, he was now faced with the disquiet of the Tlaxcaltecans, who began to resent these strangers in their midst, using their resources.
At this time, Motecazoma’s brother and successor, Cuitlahua, made overtures towards the Tlaxcaltecans to make common cause as against the white men, but the Tlaxcaltecas had seen more than enough of the haughty Mexica, and rejected the proffer. Again the Spanish had escaped their fate.
Cortes through Marina now undertook to consolidate his regional territory through a series of battles, after his usual ‘carrot and stick’ offers, transmitted in the fluid tongue of La Malinche, and it was the universal animosity toward the Mexica that became their greatest ally. It was not long before a Mexica force of some 30,000 confronted the Spanish and their Tlaxcaltecan allies and was beaten after a vicious battle.
Cortez then moved onto the offensive attacking a nearby Mexica garrison. There followed a series of battles and a series of districts acknowledging the authority of the Spanish. The basic hatred of the Mexica helped Cortes and his La Malinche weld a compact together, and in a surprisingly short time, the Spanish were once more in contention to recover the capital.
But it would be different this time.

TENOCHTITLAN III – A WATERY RETURN.
Having already had his experience of the causeways, Cortes decided that to truly invest the city, he must command the lake. He commenced to build thirteen brigantines in Tlascala, using the sails, rigging and iron work that he had prudently saved from the sinking of the ships so long ago when he needed to stop his men from returning to Hispaniola.
And having built the ships in Tlascala, he would have them transported cross-country to be launched in Lake Tezcuco, the lake surrounding Tenochtitlan. It was a brilliant and bold stroke that relied wholly on his allies, and the ability of La Malinche to translate his vision to them.
There is no denying that he manipulated his men. There is no denying that he manipulated almost anyone that he came across, it was his way.
He had asked his men to remain with him there in Tlascala, awaiting reinforcements, but even he did not know that the reinforcements were already there.
When Narvaez had landed on the coast near Vera Cruz, he had unknowingly brought with him a black slave by the name of Navarez, a man carrying the infection of smallpox, and he is only one of the diseased people that we are aware of. In addition to smallpox, we know there were also measles, yellow fever, diphtheria, influenza, and others.
These plagues meant little to the Spanish, who had grown up with them and were usually immune; otherwise they would not have survived. Not so the indigenous peoples of the Americas. They were fertile fields for the foreign bugs, and starting from Cempoalla, they spread like a wildfire.
Then too, several ships landed from different sources, and, to a man, they joined the conquistadors, adding another couple of hundred men to Cortes’ army. At the same time, the Captain, still counted as a foul criminal in Hispaniola, was sending glowing letters to the Court in Spain, exciting great royal and citizen interest, for here was a new and exciting civilization, seemingly placed there by God, solely for the enrichment of the Spanish nation.
In a triumphant processional return to Tlascala, hailed as the ‘avenger of the nation,’ he passed through Cholula. He was Cortes Redux.
The Emperor Cuitlahua had died of smallpox, along with millions of his people, and Quauhtenotzin replaced him. He was twenty-five years old, and married to Moctecazuoma’s daughter, the Princess Tecuichpo.
His spies had informed him of Cortes’ plans, so he strengthened the city’s defenses and called in as many ships as he could gather. He encouraged attacks on the white men wherever they could be found, setting a price on their heads.
Cortes now had less than six hundred men and nine smaller cannon, but he had established a manufactory for small arms and gunpowder. He told his men that they were the representatives of their king and that the Mexica were now rebels against the Spanish crown. The Spanish had the opportunity to crush the rebellion and expunge the stain on their honor as well as avenge their comrades, and become rich in the bargain. Not to mention bringing the Indians to the Christian god.
In addition he had raised levies of 125,000 Indian allies. Cortes, through Marina, addressed the Indians, telling them that they should support him to the greater glory of their own region, and that he wanted none with him who would not stay until the final capitulation of the hated Mexica.
He enforced strict and rigid ordinances against all, and they were now ready to march upon Tenochtitlan.
But this was not to be the ‘walk in the park’ as had been their other foray into the Mexica capital. As they advanced to the Valley of Mexico, they saw that the neighboring hilltops were ablaze with Mexica signal-fires, and knew that their enemies were aware of them and preparing for battle.
Planning to make his headquarters lakeside at Tezcuco, he entered the city to find it deserted, its residents having fled.
Establishing His headquarters in the city, he hardened it for defense, then sent emissaries to the Emperor Quauhtenotzin, whom the Spanish named Guatemozin offering to forget the past, and if the Mexica would but submit, the horrors of a siege could be avoided. The response was as expected.
Cortes began the assault on the capital by depriving it of the assistance of the surrounding towns. He attacked them, and in the first battle, slaughtered some 6,000 people, many of them women and children of the town, but the Mexica then broke the dikes and attempted to drown the Spanish and their allies, the failed, but succeeded in driving the Spanish back to their refuge in Tezcuco.
Nevertheless, the ferociousness and destructiveness of the battle struck fear into the hearts of the other towns, and expressions of allegiance to the Spanish king began coming in, till enemies surrounded the great city of Tenochtitlan and Cortes had gained allies among the Mexica.
It was La Malinche who had provided the valuable intelligence that the Mexica were the tribe that inhabited the Valley of Mexico, but that the Aztecs were a sub-tribe of the Mexica, and that it was the Aztecs who ruled Tenochtitlan, and who were the only real enemy who could be expected to resist until the end to protect their long-held positions of power and privilege.
Cortes had more offers of Indian allies than he had need of, but, using the good offices of La Malinche, he brilliantly informed the offerors that they should now network and assist each other against any incursions of the Aztec enemy.
Now Cortes called to Tlascala for the thirteen brigantines, and they were brought, completed but unassembled, under the protection of twenty thousand Indians who came to join Cortes’ adventure.
They soon had their opportunity.
The Spanish began to nibble away at the edges of the capital and they found the Aztec well prepared and seemingly willing and ready to resist even unto death.
Racing from town to town Cortes and his core group, seemingly everywhere at once, circled the Aztec metropolis personally aiding where towns were suddenly invested by new Aztec incursions, beating them back again and again.
Cortes now received the reinforcement of another two hundred men and eighty horses, which had landed on the coast from Hispaniola, which was now recognizing him (after all his amazing successes) as most qualified to conquer the country.
A reinforcement of a different sort also arrived in the form of a Dominican friar who had come to sell indulgences (a pass for sins) to those engaged in the war against the infidel. He returned to Hispaniola with a large part of the loot that had been gathered.
With the launch of the newly-completed brigantines, the battle for Tenochtitlan was commenced.
At the same time that Cortes was, once again, surmounting all obstacles and forging ahead towards a brilliant victory, Spanish lawyers in Hispaniola as well as some traitors among Cortes’ own forces, were conspiring to steal the fruits of his victory.

THE DEATH OF TENOCHTITLAN
Gathering his polyglot army together at Tezcuco, in number near 100,000, he sent them forth to subjugate Tenochtitlan, their first acts a short battle cutting off the capital’s water supply and a short battle attempting entry into the city itself, but they were soon rebuffed to establish quarters just outside the city.
Cortes himself had returned to Tezcuco, to take command of his little navy and set sail upon the waters of Lake Tezcuco. They soon set upon the huge waiting squadron of Aztec canoes filled with warriors, the Spanish leviathans making short work of the cockleshell canoes, becoming masters of the Aztec Sea.
Anchoring offshore, they easily defeated Indian canoe attacks and bombarded the harassing Aztecs with the ship’s batteries. They landed and set up camp while the brigantines plied the waterways, and using their superior armaments, leapfrogged from place to place.
They drove the enemy forces before them, until the Aztecs filled the waterway with rubble and the Spanish were forced to regain the land. Advancing in the narrow streets, the Spanish were seriously hampered by missiles and stones thrown from the roofs of the adjoining building, until Cortes ordered that the buildings be demolished as they advanced.
With cannon and firearms, they blasted their way through the defenders until they reached the great teocalli, the pyramid, right near their old palace residence, and sacrilegiously threw down the idols, tossing the priests off to their death.
The Aztecs now regrouped, momentarily throwing back the Spanish in confusion, abandoning their precious cannon, until they were rescued by a troop of cavalry entering in from another street.
Now it was the turn of the Spanish to drive back the Aztecs and retake the cannon, but since it had turned night, Cortez strategically drew back to a safe position, where they had originally landed and set up their camp, six days before.
An additional 50,000 native allies reinforced the Spaniards, and Cortes launched another attack on the heart of the capital. Seeing that the spirit of defense was as strong as ever, Cortes determined on a demonstration designed to sap the spirit of the Aztecs.
He settled on the palace that had been their old barracks. As the former home of Moctecazuoma’s father it had significance, and the Spanish burned it to the ground. Next, he decided to burn the fabulous zoo, but the destruction only angered the inexhaustible Aztecs, and again they drove the Spanish and their allies back to the camp at the original landing-place.
Time and again the experience repeated itself until the eve of the anniversary of the 2nd entry of the Spanish into Tenochtitlan when the Indians arranged for a successful ambush of two of the brigantines. From that point, the Spanish and their allies, now numbered at more than 150,000, were content to simply lay siege to the capital.
Soon, under the prodding of his more adventurous lieutenants, Cortes mounted a three-pronged assault on the capital, with the rapid advance; Cortes became convinced that they were being led into a trap. His insight proving true, his army was thrown into confusion by a furious onslaught. The gallant Cortes was almost taken, and was wounded in the attempt, but he was rescued by a brave Spaniard and a brave Tlaxcaltecan, and he again took command, covering the retreat of the army, all the way back to the encampment.
This time, sixty-two wounded Spaniards had been taken by the enemy, and later were led up the steps of the teocalli, and executed and eaten in full view of their countrymen.
Five more days passed, and the native allies of the Spanish began to melt away.
Gloom fell over the Spanish, given voice by the melancholy sounds of the great war drum of the Aztecs, but still their booming artillery batteries repelled the repeated Aztec attacks.
Three more days passed, and the Indian levies shamefacedly returned, then an unexpected shipment of scarce gunpowder arrived, and Cortes regained his offensive stance. He now ordered, against his sensibilities, that his army lay waste to the capital as they advanced, this providing materials to fill the obstructing canals while opening up the field of battle.
The city was dying. Ringed ‘round about by enemies, they were fearful. Cut off from sustenance, they were starving. Ravaged by the foreigner’s diseases, they had fallen. And Cortes sent forth an olive branch.
After two days, Gautemozin answered with a generalized attack, which after some brief successes, was broken by the Spanish, who inexorably pushed forward, finally coming to the evacuated palace residence of Guatemozin, which was promptly burned and demolished with all the rest.
Glorying in their ‘scorched earth’ policy, the Spaniards advanced, to be greeted by whole districts inhabited only by corpses, starved, or died of wounds or diseases. Fired by the capture of a teocalli displaying the heads of sacrificed Spanish, their fury knew no bounds, and the maddened conquistadors soon joined forces there in the heart of the desolated capital. The district of Tlateloco alone remained in the emaciated hands of the Aztecs.
Hostilities were suspended while Cortes had a great catapult erected. Unfortunately, on its first use, the huge stone launched straight skywards, then fell, destroying the infernal engine, to the amazement of the apprehensively on looking Aztecs, and the great amusement of the Spanish.
Now that the rest of the city had been destroyed, the human heart of the city was dying. Shut up in the quarter, crammed in together, starving, ravaged by disease, hundreds died daily, still Guatemozin would not surrender, and distrustful of the blandishments of the invader, neither would he meet with Cortes.
The final thrust was a ceremony of butchery, and when Guatemozin attempted to flee in a large canoe, he was quickly captured and taken aboard a brigantine. Once their Emperor was captured, the Aztecs ceased their resistance, and the Conquest was over. Brought before Cortes and Marina, the young Emperor was still defiant, but was treated kindly by his captor.
The next day, Cortes gave orders that the Mexica be allowed to leave the city, and for three days, the sadly human remnants trailed from that place, the last of the residents of Tenochtitlan.
The siege had lasted almost three months, destroying the capital of the poor tribe that had come upon that place some three centuries previous.
In the fullness of time, when Guatemozin refused to reveal the hiding place of the royal treasure, saying that there was none left to reveal, put the young Emperor to the question, as translated by Marina, and he was tortured when they discerned his reticence. He revealed only that treasure had been thrown into the oozy mud bottom of the lake, and he was executed soon after when he was accused of a conspiracy, even though he vehemently denied any part.
And all this time, La Malinche was at his side, translating, interpreting, advising and even consoling.
After severe legal difficulties, Cortes was confirmed as the Governor-General of New Spain, and his true wife sent to him, whereupon he was forced to put aside Dona Marina, as she had come to be called, and she was given to be wed to Don Juan Jaramillo, and she was given estates where she lived out the remainder of her days, which were not many.





FLOATING TOWERS OF THE GODS









IX

BOOK THE NINTH
BACK TO TENOCHTITLAN
Wherein Cortes returns to lay siege to Tenochtitlan & most of the inhabitants die

The terrible sickness of the gods lay over all the land. It had started in Tenochtitlan, but soon it was everywhere and people died in their thousands, in their tens of thousands, maybe even in the hundreds of thousands. Many thought it was the revenge of the gods, but to us, death was still death. To this day no one knows how many died, but everyone knows that many more died than lived. Tenochtitlan was no longer the city of my youth. Large parts of the capital were in ruins and too many were sick to try rebuilding. Bodies lay everywhere in the streets and in the houses. People died crawling for water, or for food, or for help. Each morning we found bodies up the steps of the great teocalli, they had crawled up to seek aid from the gods.
I cannot speak of it without recalling the horror. Often it seemed as if every single person was either sick, dying, or already dead. The capital seemed unnatural and ghostly when it was deserted, when before it had been teeming with life. We knew that there were whole towns and villages that were empty of The People, and returning to the forest or the desert. I had received knowledge that everyone in the village of my birth, my mother and father, my brother, and everyone I had known were dead, and wild pigs routed through the ruins of our houses for scraps of flesh.
While our system of ‘ears’ had been broken by the sickness, we did know of the presence of the Castilianos in Tlaxcala, and it was at that time before he was taken by the sickness, that Motecazoma’s brother and successor, Cuitlahac, sent emissaries to our ancient enemies, the Tlaxcalteca, to join us against the Whites, but the Tlaxcalteca were afraid that this was some trick of the Azteca, and they sent our emissaries back with empty hands. We did nothing more about it, for soon Cuitlahac was to die and we had much to concern us with this new plague.
In a triumphant processional return to Tlaxcala, hailed as the ‘avenger of the nation,’ he passed through Cholula. We of the Aztecs failed to understand how bitterly The People were towards the Mexica and their Collectors and their army. They burned with hatred and the thirst for revenge, while Cortes appeared to them to be their savior. They did not realize, as we did not, that these Castilianos were not just the enemies of the Aztecs; they were the enemies of all Cemanahuac. Alas, we did not know it,
We knew that the Azteca were not loved throughout Cemanahuac, but we thought that by defeating Cortes, we had still shown that our army was to be feared.
We heard something about what was happening in Tlaxcala, but to be honest, we were so concerned about the plague and repairing the damage that we paid little attention. Yes, we knew that there was movement in and around Tlaxcala, and even minor skirmishes, but we just didn’t think that the Castilianos were any threat, and as for the Tlaxcalans, we joked that Tlaxcala was a sacrifice farm where they grew the warriors that we would sacrifice any time we wanted. We considered the chapter finished and we concentrated on the problems they had left behind.
We were the victims of our culture. It had always been that once an enemy was decisively beaten and their soldiers had broken, it was over and we were master. Not so with the Castilianos. We had never experienced an enemy that ran, and then came back in strength. With the Castilianos the key was their native partners. No matter what many thought, being with the Castilianos did not mean that the Tlaxcalans were protected from the sickness of the gods, there were as many sick and dying among their ranks as among ours, but the difference was that their Castiliano leaders were not sick and dying as our commanders were. The Castilianos were the rock upon which our poor waves of warriors broke.
There were even rumors of other ships on the coast, but we thought that they had come to remove the Castilianos from our shores. Never did we consider that they would return. We did not fully understand their never-ending hunger for the yellow metal.
And in the midst of this death and destruction, the Castilianos returned. Almost like allies of the sickness they came, another plague. This time it was different. This time we knew what we faced. We knew they could be beaten. The Castilianos were only men and nothing more.
But this was not to be the ‘walk in the park’ as had been their other invasion of the Mexica capital. As they advanced to the Valley of Mexico, they must have seen that the neighboring hilltops were ablaze with Mexica signal-fires, and known that we were aware of them and preparing for battle. Only we knew that the signal-fires were mostly a trick, and the sick and the dying often tended them. We were learning from the Castilianos.
Once again the Castilianos came toward Tenochtitlan. Some 600 of them came from we knew not where. We had thought that most of them were dead. Then there were some 100,000 Tlaxcaltecans, and even some Otomi. They split their forces, and Cortes took the road to Tenochtitlan, while Pedro de Alvarado, the one we called Tonatiuh, led the forces to the Tlatelolco district. Tonatiuh attacked, but was immediately defeated and driven back. Again he came, but this time we attacked him fiercely from boats, and he was forced back again. Cortes was able to make his headquarters lakeside at Tezcuco; he entered the city to find it deserted, its residents having fled. He hardened the city for defense, and try as we might, by repeated attacks, he would not go.
Now he had the bravado to send emissaries to Cuatemoc offering to forget the past, and if the Mexica would but submit, the horrors of a siege could be avoided. The response of Cuatemoc was to send several thousand warriors to expend themselves against the fortified walls of Tezcuco. It was a price we could ill afford, but all of the Council agreed that it was a proper answer to this foolhardy foreigner.
It was a bad day for us when we realized that, weakened as we were by sickness and loss of our most experienced commanders; we were helpless against this most determined opponent.

THE DEATH OF TENOCHTITLAN
Gathering his army together at Tezcuco, in number near 100,000, he led them against Tenochtitlan; their first acts were a short battle cutting off the capital’s water supply, and a quick thrust attempting entry into the city itself. They were testing the level of resistance, but they were quickly thrown back to Tezcuco.
We were to see warfare such as we had never experienced, almost unthinkable acts. Not only did they cut off the water to the city, but once they controlled the lake and the surrounding land, they completely isolated us, so that there could be no reinforcements, but more, that there could be no supply of food and other things. They were starving us into submission, and we were to discover that thirst and hunger were very powerful enemies. The water available to us caused a terrible flux of the bowels, and we lost more people to yet another sickness. We did not know it, but the siege of our once-beautiful city was to last for ninety interminable days.
Cortes returned to Tezcuco, to take command of his little navy and set sail upon the waters of Lake Tezcuco. We had sent the huge waiting squadron of Aztec boats filled with warriors against the ships, but the Castiliano monsters ate through the smaller canoes and barges like a flock of birds against a swarm of insects, and they were masters of the Aztec Sea.
Anchoring offshore from Tenochtitlan, they easily defeated our canoe attacks and bombarded our harassing forces with the ship’s batteries. They landed and set up camp while the brigantines used the canals, and with their firepower, leapfrogged from place to place.
The ships and their cannon drove us before them, until our warriors filled the waterway with rubble and then the Castilianos were forced to press forward by land. Advancing in the narrow streets, the Castilianos were harassed and hampered by missiles and stones thrown from the roofs of the adjoining buildings, until Cortes ordered that the buildings be exploded and torn down as they advanced.
With cannon and firearms, they blasted their way through our desperate defenders until they reached our great teocalli, the pyramid, right near their old palace residence, and contemptuously threw down tour idols, tossing the priests off to their death.
We regrouped, momentarily throwing back the Castilianos in surprised confusion, and they abandoned their precious cannon, fleeing until they were rescued by a troop of their cavalry entering in from another street.
Then it was their turn to drive our forces back and retake their cannon, but since it had turned night, and with his forces bleeding but not yet quite broken, Cortez strategically drew back to where they had originally landed and set up their camp, six days before. Back to their starting point.
Suddenly we got word that an additional 50,000 native allies had come to reinforce the Castilianos, and Cortes immediately launched another attack on the heart of the capital. Seeing that our defense was as strong as ever, Cortes must have then determined to show us the folly of resistance.
He settled on the palace that had been their old barracks. As the former home of Motecazoma’s father it had significance, and the Castilianos burned it and our fabulous zoo, to the ground. But they had miscalculated, and the destruction only angered our warriors, and again they drove the Castilianos and their allies all the way back to Tezcuco.
Time and again the experience repeated itself until the eve of the anniversary of the second entry of the Castilianos into Tenochtitlan. On this anniversary, we arranged for a successful ambush of two of the brigantines and the capture of their crews. From that point, the Castilianos and their allies, now numbered at more than 150,000, were content to simply lay siege to the capital and avoid another confrontation.
Then the Castilianos mounted a vicious three-pronged assault on the capital, meeting with amazing success. Drawing him deeper and deeper into the city, we waited until it was time to close the trap as if they were a flock of rabbits. We threw his people into confusion by our furious onslaught. This time we came very close to taking Cortes, and actually wounded him, but he was wrested from our grip by Tlaxcaltecan and Castiliano forces, and all were forced to withdraw, once again, all the way back to their encampment at Tezcuco.
Ah, but this time, sixty-two wounded Spaniards had been taken, and with great ceremony and noise, they were later were led up the steps of our great teocalli. Once dragged to the top, their living hearts torn from their bodies which were then toppled down the stairs within sight of their friends and countrymen.
Gloom fell over the Castilianos, and their attacks stopped after the sacrifices. We knew they could still hear our voice, the great war drum on the top of the teocalli, but they were not distraught enough to still their booming artillery batteries which still repelled our repeated attacks. We did notice that even the cannon fire did not seem quite as fierce.
Yet there was little to be heard from the boisterous Castilianos for five more days. We dared to hope that our crisis had passed, and we cheered to see that many of the Tlaxcaltecan allies of the Castilianos had begun to melt away. Now the guns were almost silent, and we lessened our assaults in the hope that they all might withdraw.
Then three more days passed, and we were disappointed to see that the Tlaxcaltecans returned with much scarce gunpowder.
Now the tactics of the Castilianos changed, and rather than continuing through the narrow streets to be harried by our warriors on the roof of the buildings, Cortes’ army began to lay waste to the capital as they advanced, destroying our best means of ambush, and providing materials to fill the obstructing canals while opening up the field of battle.
From that moment, it became clear that the Castilianos were not just fighting for gold; it had become personal with them. They meant to revenge their comrades and they fought with fury.
Our city was dying. Ringed ‘round about by enemies, our people were fearful. Cut off from sustenance, we were starving. Our inflow of pure water halted, we were dying of thirst. Ravaged by the foreigner’s diseases, so many of us had fallen. And this was the time that Cortes sent La Malinche to Cuatemoc with a plea to save the infants, the old and infirm by surrendering and accepting the king of the Castilianos as their own.
A plea to save the infants? One of the first realizations of how decimated the city was, the silence. Our city had always been a city of noisy children, laughing, shouting, crying children. Then, we noticed that, while there were still children, these were quiet and sullen children, their faces drawn and their stomachs swollen with hunger. Then there were no more children. And we miss them still.
After two days, Cuatemoc responded to the entreaties of La Malinche by attacking with absolutely everything we had left. At first we were successful, but we did not have the reserves to sustain the attack. The Castilianos, who then inexorably pushed forward, pushing us back and back, destroying great swaths of our city, turned our forces back. They finally came to the evacuated palace residence of Cuatemoc, which they maliciously burned and demolished with all the rest.
Glorying in their new policy of total destruction, the Spaniards advanced, to be greeted by whole districts inhabited only by corpses, dead of starvation, or of wounds or diseases.
As a tribute to their bravery, we had mounted the heads of the sacrificed Castilianos and their horses on a rack on top of our sacred teocalli. When the Castilianos captured our pyramid, their wails of rage and frustration could be heard all over the city. The grisly finding fired them until their fury knew no bounds, they threw the priests down the pyramid, and then stormed down and the maddened Castilianos soon joined forces there in the heart of the desolated capital. We had finally been pushed into the walled district of Tlateloco, our last redoubt.
No matter how the sacrifice of Castilianos angered them, it was our way and we in no way considered it shameful or horrifying. It was what we did to our own, and we could do no less with theirs, even honoring their horses. In the course of fighting, we captured more of the Castilianos, fifty-seven one time, five another time, three still another, and yet again, fifteen. We always honored them in the same way, placing their heads in racks to be displayed. It was what we had always done with an honored enemy.
In order to breach the wall, the Castilianos suspended their attacks while Cortes had a great catapult erected. We were amazed and could not imagine what this massive construction portended for us. We watched a huge stone loaded at the end of the great arm, and saw the many soldiers it took to wind it down until it was in firing position. We were most perplexed when, with a great cry, the Castilianos launched the massive boulder straight up into the sky, as high as the top of the temples on top of the teocalli, then it fell – down directly on top of the catapult, destroying it utterly, scattering timbers and Castilianos about it. That was the only time they built such a great engine.
Now that the rest of the city had been destroyed, the human heart of the city was dying. Shut up in the quarter, crammed in together, starving, ravaged by disease, hundreds were dying daily, but still our leader, the courageous Cuatemoc, would not surrender, and neither would he meet with Cortes.
Their cannon finally breached the wall, but then the Castilianos were faced with a wall of our houses. In the back wall of each of the houses, a hole was made that was just large enough for a single warrior to slip through. Then we attacked in force, beating the Castilianos back beyond the quarter. When they attacked with their horses, forcing us back to the wall of houses, our warriors escaped by going back through the holes, and then it was easy to defend the holes, and they were too small for the horses.
But still there was sickness and famine. Our only food was lizards, swallows, corncobs and the salt grasses of the lake. We ate water lilies and chewed on deerhides and pieces of leather. We ate the bitterest of weeds, and some even ate dirt. The Castilianos had cut off our water supplies and there was no fresh water to drink. We had only stagnant water and the brine of the lake, and many of us died of dysentery.
Day by day, even hour-by-hour, we grew weaker and weaker, less able to resist the attacks of the Castilianos and the Tlaxcaltecans. Despite the exhortations of our young Lord Chief Speaker, his captains and the priests, we were driven back and back and even into the market place of Tlateloco.
But first they burned the temple within the quarter, and the flames and black smoke rose up into the sky almost like it was a living thing, and the people lamented for the death of their gods.
Then they came into the market place with their horses and their swords, but this time they brought their terrible dogs. For hours it continued, they rode into every corner of the market place, turning over and burning the stalls, and trampling the merchants underfoot. We had little enough in those days, but the market was full of whatever we had, the people exchanging pottery and clothes and little trinkets, all the things that made life worthwhile, and a place where we could meet and talk together in relative safety. Up until then, the Castilianos and their filthy Tlaxcaltecans had fought our warriors, and the rest were left alone unless they got in the way. This was different.
Time and time we fought the far superior forces of the Castilianos and their allies. We drove them back and they drove us back, but each time, we were driven back just a little further. The brave warriors of Tlateloco accomplished much more than I had ever hoped to see, but it was not enough, and we knew it was not enough.
The day came when there was nothing left to do. We that were left of the Council sadly sent our brave young Cuatemoc out to the Castilianos by canoe, and he stood carrying his shield and maquihital, and the people wailed and sent their cry to the skies, “Our youngest prince is leaving us! He is going to attack the Castilianos! He is going out to kill the ‘gods’!”
They met him upon the water, and he sent his poor canoe against their great barkentine, but when he saw that they could overwhelm him as if he were nothing, he allowed them to take him. We saw them take him back to Tezcuco, back to where Cortes was, and when he came face to face with our conqueror, he was received with all the respect due a king, but Cuatemoc placed his hand on Cortes’ dagger and said, “I have done everything in my power to save my kingdom from your hands. Since my own gods have been against me, I now beg that you yourself take my life so that I can die honorably. This would put an end to the kingship of Mexico, and it would be just and right, for you have already destroyed my city and killed my people.” Cortes refused and promised that he would be treated as a king should be, and suddenly it was over.
The Castilianos fired their cannon in celebration and their cheers were heard everywhere in our great capital, and our people and our warriors knew that we were lost, and our gods were lost. Our people were tired with starving and dying, and they began to leave the city, by canoes and by the causeways they streamed from our defeat.
The Castilianos stopped them, every one, but not to capture them. They were pleased to let our people leave, but they searched them all, the men and the women, thrusting their rough hands into blouses and skirts, often forcing people to become naked so that they could search the clothes and the bodies for gold. Many of our warriors were carrying their shields and weapons, and these the Castilianos took aside and branded on their cheeks or lips, throwing the weapons into the canals.
I have heard much of how many died of these or of those in the struggle for Tenochtitlan. I have heard that the Tlaxcaltecans lost more than thirty thousand while of the Aztecs more than two hundred and forty thousand died, some from battle, but many more from disease and starvation. Of the Castilianos, three hundred and eight perished. All these were just in the great efforts for our capital, and of these, only with the Castilianos are we sure of the numbers, for they alone knew of their numbers at the start, and their numbers at the end. As for us and for the Tlaxcaltecans, we can only guess, and no one will ever know how many died.
Tenochtitlan had fallen, and the mighty Azteca were no more. 4251 words















X
Book the tenth
No mas
Wherein is the Death of the Aztec Empire & the Beginning of New Spain & the coming of the Friars


They stalked the devastated city, these Castilianos formally dressed for battle, not in the white cotton armor that they had become accustomed to wearing, but rather in their coats of mail and their metal helmets. And they wore white handkerchiefs over their noses as they were sickened by the stench of rotting bodies.
It was the Year of Our Lord Fifteen Hundred and Twenty-One, as the Castilianos styled it, and Cortes had landed in Fifteen Hundred and Nineteen. He had been in Cemanahuac for only two years, and those two years changed our lives forever.
The Castilianos finally let the people leave the city, after they had begged to go from that place of no food and no water. The next day, Cortes gave orders that the Mexica be allowed to leave the city, and for three days, the sadly human remnants trailed from that place, the last of the residents of Tenochtitlan.
But the Castilianos also talked to the local chiefs and told them that the people could now return to, and rebuild the city, except they could not return to the Tenochtitlan District, for that was now reserved only for the Castilianos.
Stories were heard of the poor way that our people were treated when they went across the lake as refugees. The neighboring communities hated us because of the way we had treated them before, and for the greed of our Collectors, and so the treatment was in the way of revenge.
The people returned, and slowly, ever so slowly, parts of the city were rebuilt, and people began to live there, not as before, but they lived there.
We of the Council were still in the city, trapped and imprisoned there with our young Lord Chief Speaker. The Castilianos called us all to one place, and they had but one question to ask of us: where was the gold?
We told them that we would immediately turn over all that there was in the city, and we sent out for what we could gather of gold crowns, gold ornaments for arms and legs, gold helmets and even some disks and bars of gold. We brought to them what there was, but they looked upon it, and Cortes was angry as he said, “Is this all the gold in the city? You must bring me all of it.”
We told him honestly that we had given all that there was. We told him that they had taken most of our gold when they had left the city on the night they called ‘La Noche Triste’ although we did not tell them that it was not a sad night for us.
Cortes spoke to us through La Malinche, and she said that they wanted the gold bars, the bars that had been lost in the lake and the canals, as they had fled.
They did not understand. For us, the gold by itself was simply the shit of the gods, and had meaning and value to us only as it was used to make beautiful things. When the Castilianos took all our beautiful things and melted them down into little bars of metal with the stamp of a foreign king on them, they became next to worthless to us, but Cortes became angrier when we said it. We had been too busy to chase their little bars, which were of little value to us. He demanded that we send men to find their little bars of gold.
For five days we sent men to search the bottom of the lake and the canal where the gold might have fallen. We found some. We even found some bodies of Castilianos that had been weighted down to the bottom by gold and by their armor, but it was not very much. The bottom was mostly mud and silt that had been laid down for hundreds of years and was very deep. It was our thinking that the little bars had just worked their way down and were lost forever.
When we presented our findings, Cortes was enraged with anger, and accused us of stealing ‘his’ gold and concealing it. Each of us presented theories as to where the gold had gone. Maybe women had taken it out of the city concealed in their clothes. Maybe their allies, the Tlaxcaltecans had taken a lot of it with them. Then there were our allies, tribes that had come into the city to aid us in our defense and then had left to go home. They could have taken the gold with them.
Cortes had lists of the gold that had been stored in the city. He demanded the eight bars of gold that had been stored in the palace under the care of the steward. The steward had died of smallpox, but when his son discovered that half of the gold was gone, he disappeared.
He looted the city again and again, until there was nothing left. Then he sent out his own Collectors to reap tribute from the other territories. This was in spite of the fact that he had called all the chiefs together after the conquest of Tenochtitlan and told them that the Aztecs had conquered them and held them to tribute, but he had come to set them free, that their lands were their own again.
But his anger was not settled because there was all that gold that had been lost, and he would not believe that no one had stolen it. Finally, in front of the Council, who could do nothing, he had out Lord Chief Speaker tortured, finishing by putting our Lord’s feet to the fire, but he, and all of us, begged that there was no hidden gold. Finally, Cortes stopped the torture, and several of us carried Cuatemoc out with us for treatment.
There were seven of us left, those who had been Council members. Cortes had won an entire country, but what was he to do with it? His dealings with all had been at gunpoint, and even this crude conqueror knew that it could not be ruled that way. There had to be treaties and alliances, and local chiefs to keep things going, and the easiest way was to keep the elite in place but subservient to him.
The major difference that occurred was that in order to keep power, all of us had to foreswear our old gods and convert to Christianity. It sounds more difficult than it was, and myself, I had already been baptized several years before, there on the beach by Padre de Olmedo. I never noticed that it made too much of a difference to me, and it was the same with others. It was just that our gods became their saints, and Quetzalcoatl became recognized as Jesus Christ. The only real difference was that we were no longer allowed to do mass sacrifices.
Not that it made a real difference. Oh, the priests said much about the evil of our sacrifices, but here they had a crucified god who died upon the cross in agony, covered with blood from his terrible wounds. Then they worshipped and drank of his blood and ate of his flesh. Is there a real difference?
And all of us of The People knew that the blood of sacrifices was necessary to water the land and make it fruitful, and in the far away places, out of sight and hearing of the terrible priests, we still found our ways to water the earth.
It was easy to take in these new gods, and we thought little of it. We of the Mexica had always exchanged gods, and one of the symbols of Azteca rule was that the conquered tribe had to accept the god Huitzliopochtli added to their own gods. At first Christianity was difficult because we were supposed to completely give up our own gods, but once we discovered the saints, it all became understandable, and every once in a while we would crucify one of our own in the forests so we could be more comfortable with the worship of a crucified god.
It only became difficult when all the priests arrived.
It was not until 1522, the year after the fall of Tenochtitlan, that the first contingent of three priests arrived from Spain. Before that we had only seen itinerant priests who came and went and had little effect, but with the decision of the Pope to give the mission to the ‘Indians’ as they called us, to their so-called ‘Franciscan’ Friars, and to give them extraordinary powers, things began to change. Not much later we were amazed to see a different kind of Friar, one they called a ‘Dominican.’ We knew not what the words meant, so we called them by the color of their uniforms, the long, hooded gowns that were similar to what our own priests wore, but with the addition of ropes to gather the gowns together about the waist, and with a large wooden cross dangling. All Friars had no hair on the top of their heads, and only a fringe around for the rest. The ‘Franciscans’ we called the Brown Friars, and the ‘Dominicans’ were the Black Friars.
We had thought that all of the Castilianos were one, but we were soon to see it was different. We of The People were different in that we were tribes that controlled certain areas of land, but with the Castilianos, it was almost as if they were all different, and all against each other, and not even united toward us.
The first friars were the Brown Friars, and they engaged themselves in teaching their language to us and in learning our languages at their doctrinas, their first schools. Two years after that, a large company of Brown Friars that arrived were to cause ripples from one end of Cemanahuac to the other. There were twelve of them, and when they landed at Veracruz, they began a three hundred mile pilgrimage, over the mountains to Mexico City, barefoot and dressed only in their coarse robes.
That drew the attention of The People, but that was not all. Many of our people still more than half-thought of the Castilianos as ‘gods,’ but when these humble, starved, pale, ragged, mendicant friars appeared before Cortes and his men, they fell to their knees to kiss the hands of the friars, and the hems of their robes, begging their blessing.
This was only the start, but these were the ones who truly conquered our people, for the other Castilianos only wanted our gold and our bodies and our land, while we were to discover that these meek ones wanted our very souls.
Cuatemoc was left alive as a figurehead, and those that would not follow Cortes would follow Cuatemoc. In a strange and foolish ceremony, with many of the Castilianos and chiefs in attendance, we seven of the old Council were formally invested with impressive titles and only generalized authority. They told me I was now Royal Chamberlain, and so I became a Royal Chamberlain, never mind that I had no idea what the duties of a Royal Chamberlain were. We had as much authority as Cortes wanted to give us for whatever use he would put us to.
In truth, Cortes gave orders to La Malinche and she transferred the orders to us, and this was the time when I began to know this small girl-child that we knew as La Malinche, but who I came to know as Malinsi.
As I came to know from our many conversations, Malinsi began life at Painalla in the vicinity of Coatzalcualcos, near present-day Veracruz on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Although born a Mexica Princess, her life changed rapidly into tragedy when her noble father died, her mother married another and Malinsi’s half-brother was born. She had become an obstacle to the passage of her father’s power and privilege to the new offspring.
Represented to their neighbors as dead. Then sold into Maya slavery by her treacherous mother. The Maya then sold her to the Tlaxcaltecans from what is now the Tabasco area. She soon became a lexicon of both the Maya and Mexica languages, Mexica Nahuatal, being spoken everywhere throughout our known world.
Other than that, we knew little of this woman, who changed the course of our history. As Cortes later wrote in a letter to the King, ‘…next to God, we have Dona Marina to thank for this victory… ‘. Without her, all the Americas might still be speaking Nahuatal.
How else would Cortes have known of the delicate balance of the ‘Mexica Empire?’ How else would he have known that the ‘Empire’ was, in actuality a hostile collection of tribes that hated the Mexica for their cruelty and oppression. They did not realize that they could not have really come to appreciate true oppression and cruelty until the Castilianos came.
Cortes’ ‘accomplishments’ were either brave, foolhardy, or criminal, depending on the eye of the beholder, but whatever they were, they would not have been possible without the information and insight gained from this little teenaged girl.
Cortes’ path to Tenochtitlan was strewn with obstacles. True, his armaments were far superior and were victorious in the pitched battles that were fought, but far more important was Malinsi, who through her history knew the tribes’ weak points, and who enabled Cortes to negotiate and cobble together a coalition against the Mexica.
Imagine if such a coalition had been with the Mexica and against the Captain. The little band would have been as nothing against the millions of warriors that could have been thrown against them. And swallowed up without trace in the vastness of Mexico, it might have been many decades before such foolishness might have been tried again.
Early on, the lofty Cortes had ordered that she be given to Alonzo Hernando Puertocarrera, a defrocked wall-eyed priest who greatly resembled a crane, but that was before her true value had been discovered.
The die was cast and the Rubicon had been crossed, Dona Marina was in the fold. Aguilar spoke Castilianos and Maya while Marina spoke Maya and Nahuatal. The mechanism was in place to translate between Castilianos and Nahuatal. Cortes could now speak to Mexico and Mexico would listen.
She learned the language of the Castilianos so quickly that Aguilar was soon consigned to lesser duties and Malinsi became the voice of the Captain. Puertocarrera was later returned to Spain, and Cortes and Malinsi could be together, and they became inseparable.
Malinsi was now Marina, but on her way to becoming La Malinche.
Marina interpreted, translated and advised. It was she who spoke to and negotiated with the Tlaxcaltecans, the Totonacs, the Mexica and the Cholulans, and then stood by as the Cholulans were treacherously butchered to inspire terror in the rest of the tribes. It was her coalition more than it was Cortes’, because she alone knew the weak spots.
It was Marina who avoided the traps and snares that had been set for the unknowing Castilianos. It was Marina who magnanimously forgave her former family, though her mere presence, as a respected member of the invincible ones alone would have been enough to strike terror and envy deep into their hearts.
It was Marina, the despised and cast-off child from nowhere, of no family, no wealth, no status, no wisdom of years – it was Marina who spoke directly to the mighty Motecazoma for Cortes, gave orders to Motecazoma for Cortes and saw Moctecazoma imprisoned and then murdered. She was also the interpreter with Cuitlahac and even Cuatemoc. This was the same child who would never have even been allowed to look upon their countenance.
Though only 14, she was hardly an innocent. Somehow, she had learned to grab for the ‘Main Chance’ and to hold onto it for dear life. She had lived a full life before she came to Cortes, and had been mistress to the Cacique of Tabasco. She had gone from hand to hand and was wise in the ways of men, even beyond the ordinary intelligence of women. Her history had taught her to seek the best road for her, and she found it in service to Cortes.
The Conquistador had landed in an unwilling ‘protectorate’ of the Mexica, but they still owed fealty to Motecazoma. A brief difference of opinion followed, with Cortes insisting on going to Motecazoma, who simply wanted him to go away. And all was complicated by the Castilianos’ inability to communicate by other than rough sign language. Marina had heard the old priest, Aguilar, speak in her own Maya tongue, and it was to the delighted Aguilar that she initially revealed her linguistic abilities.
By the time that I was to become acquainted with her, Cortes was calling her ‘my tongue’, and she was given the same respect and fear that was due to Cortes.
She was small, as all of our women were small. She was well favored in our eyes, and also in the eyes of the Castilianos. Her skin was light-colored, what we would call yellow. Her eyes were startlingly black. Her long hair was looped up in the twin braids that she always wore, the hair entwined with cloths of different colors. He habit was to wear the huipil, the modest dress of the women from the Land of the Deer. At the beginning her huipils were mostly white, but as time went on, these became more elegant and colorful, but as for the woman herself, she remained modest and withdrawn unless speaking for the Captain.
When I first heard of this Mexica who had given herself freely over to help to Castilianos, I would happily have offered he up on the altar of Huitzliopochtli, even though we never sacrificed women. Later, she was more to be feared because of the advantage she gave to Cortes. Once the fighting was over, and I understood her past, my feelings of her began to change. I understood why she might feel no loyalties toward the Mexica, and why she might rely only upon herself and no other. She had attached herself to Cortes almost by accident. Something like her was needed by the Castilianos if they were to have any chance at all in their reckless adventure.
I am sure that what occurred was never in the wildest intention of Cortes at the start. Indeed, no sane person could have possibly imagined what might happen, but Cortes was quick to take advantage of chances that fate threw his way. One of those chances was Malinsi. A lesser man would have paid this Mexica child little heed, but Cortes saw her as a path to glory.
As I got to know her, a thing that could never have happened when I was a mighty warrior of the Aztecs, resplendent in my Jaguar clan head and skins, for she was but a woman and would never have been consulted on such matters.
Now, as the tongue, sometime spy, confidant, advisor, instructor, interpreter and intervener for Cortes, she was arguably the most important Mexica, man or woman, in the length and breadth of the whole of Cemanahuac.
In appearance modest and respectful, in private she had a very quick and biting intelligence, and was disdainful of most, Mexica, Castiliano, or indeed anyone else.
In time I came to understand and appreciate the steel core that lay within the soft exterior of the child who had been made too soon a woman. In rare moments, the glittering obsidian of her inner eyes would flash forth, an indelible messenger of her inner fire, and inner fire that had laid waste to the powerful Aztecs.
Our world had ended and a new world was beginning.
3326 WORDS













XI
BOOK THE ELEVENTH
-PRESENT AT THE BIRTH-
In which I assist the CastilLianos, befriend La Malinche & help them found a new nation until they murder our Lord Chief Speaker, Cuatemoc.






The world of the Aztec had ended, and I was there at the beginning of the world the Castilianos called ‘New Spain.’ In triumph, the Castilianos now called themselves Conquistadores, the Conquerors.
The Conquistadores were one thing, but the Friars were another. They were the stuff of Empire by other means, and it was the friars who imposed a matrix of order upon us. It was a yoke that lay lightly at the beginning, but became increasingly burdensome.
We saw things one-way, but the Castilianos saw it another. The People quickly accepted baptism because we had always been used to accepting additional gods. We did not see it as a life-changing experience. They did.
To us at the beginning, it was not very different to be Christian. We were used to endless ceremonies, and it was not difficult to pass from the fasts and festivals of one to the fasts and festivals of the other, to transfer the homage paid to our own many gods to the saints and the three-part god of the other, indeed for many of us, our own became theirs, and the transfer was almost painless.
And there was an additional inducement, and it was a powerful one. The People were still dying of the ‘god’s sickness’, and there seemed to be nothing that our own priests or healers could do against it. We watched our wives, our children, our friends… everyone was dying of this terrible evil wind that blew through us.
I myself had been sick for some 10 days, and come close to dying. For days I did not know who or where I was, and terrible boils and sores covered my body, but slowly they dried up and went away, leaving little holes and craters in the skin of my chest and my face, and these signs of the passage of the ‘god’s sickness’ were seen on many faces, as well as the whiteness of many eyes that could no longer see.
But I recovered from this terrible scourge that had been visited upon me, and I believed, and indeed still believe, that I lived because I had been baptized, and I took note that many of The People who lived, were the ones who had accepted the Lord Jesus Christ.
This was a common belief among The People, for it was clear that the Castilianos were never so afflicted, and we believed that it was because they were under the protection of their god. It was only natural that The People ran to the priests to have themselves and their children baptized so they would be protected.
And when many of the baptized ones also became sick and died, the priests always carefully explained that the belief of the one who died had not been strong enough to protect him.
Many of us became fervent Christians.
It began with the doctrinas, their beginning schools that everyone in the district, had to attend, or be punished, and the punishment was the whip. While it began with only three of these centers of instruction, within a few years they were everywhere, hundreds of them. At first they were welcomed, for they also brought the medicine of the Castilianos as well. In addition, they taught Spanish techniques of crafts, farming and manufacturing, and the friars also married, baptized and buried us.
Conversion for us meant little and came easily, and for the Friars it seemed as if we were but children to be cosseted, protected and chastised. As soon as they appeared, we accepted them as not only our spiritual and temporal advisors, but also as our instructors on government, law and morals. We were allowed to continue with our own Caciques and they helped us to establish the cofradias, the church councils, which quickly became final arbiters of all community affairs.
Our priests had always been the powers in our communities, and we knew naught of any difference between the religious and civil authorities. They had always been one and the same, and now the Christian friars simply moved in and displaced our own priests in an almost seamless transition – at least that is how it seemed to the Castilianos.
We had been told of the words of their Christ “to render unto Caesar that things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s. That is what we did. We of The People each became two people. With each other we were as we always were, and we had our own leaders and our own priests and we worshipped our own gods. After all, we had gotten along quite well without the interference of the Castilianos before they came, and saw no reason to change excessively to please them. We were adults, and each of us had our own niche in our own society, and we could see no reason to alter our ways. With the Castilianos we became subservient children to bow and scrape and chafe at the bit and complain and whine. We could do little else.
And, to be fair, the friars did what they could to be helpful, and they tried, but in truth, they were most helpful in dealing with their own, with the Castilianos and the Conquistadores, and the Castilianos were now different from the Conquistadores. The Conquistadores were the soldiers and sailors that had come with Cortes, and many had been awarded huge estates, which might include several towns. These Conquistadores were now lords in their own right, and usually too rich and powerful to be bothered with the day-to-day business of Empire. In truth, most were more suited to battle than business. Of more consequence was the flood of Castilianos dispatched from Spain to manage the minutiae of the bureaucracy. They were the ones that caused the problems.
Spain was a nest of procuradors, the lawyers. They made their homes in and created the complications that enriched their lives. They had made a puzzle over life in Spain, and began early to do the same to New Spain. Cortes had asked that no lawyers be sent because they would sow discontent, and it had been promised, yet somehow, here they were.
Spanish decree had prohibited “attorneys and men learned in the law from setting foot in the country, on the ground that experience had shown, they would be sure by their evil practices to disturb the peace of the community.” These prohibited lawyers burrowed in everywhere, draining off efficiency and pesos. These bureaucrats had grown up and been educated in a complicated urbanized society that was totally alien to us, yet they were now in charge. Friction was to be expected, and the expectations were fulfilled.
It was at these friction points that the friars made themselves indispensable. They acted as the mediators, our advocates before the too powerful bureaucrats, our protectors against the rapacious Conquistadores, our confessors, our ambassadors, as our fathers. Like all fathers, they not only protected, they also punished, and as time passed, the punishments became more severe.
We did not realize that the doctrinas were a tool of oppression.
As I have said, the friars treated us as children, and while we were infants, unschooled in the ways of Christianity, even though baptized, our lapses were only scolded. As we advanced through the doctrinas, we were held to the standards of our education, and any faltering of faith, including the ever-increasing work assignments that sometimes amounted to slavery, could result in flogging, excommunication, branding, exile, loss of property, and as time progressed, to garroting or burning.
I have spoken of the doctrinas as places of instruction, and so they were, but they were other things as well. They were, of course, a place of worship that The People were required to attend. They were also centers of the so-called ‘convent’ towns, models of what the Castilianos were to install, once there were enough priests, and that would be soon, because more and more came almost every day.
I have seen these doctrinas as they were called, but to my eyes, these were not just places of worship or instruction, they were fortresses, often housing soldiers.
Built of huge stone blocks, often torn from our own sacred places, with enormous ironbound wooden doors, the outside windows were mere loopholes through which muskets could fire. They were built as an impregnable square bordering a vast open interior space, part parade ground, part vegetable garden and fruit orchard, this was the real living space and safe center for the Castilianos.
It also became the government center for these convent towns.
We had not yet had the pleasure of the presence of the Holy Office of the Inquisition.
My stay in Mexico City, as it is now called, lasted only until the death of Cuatemoc in the spring of 1525. For three years I was with the Castilianos.
I was titled the Royal Chamberlain, which meant little, but as time passed I was tasked with meeting with the many Caciques who came to see Cortes. Instead they saw me, and sometimes they also saw La Malinche, who was always cool and aloof with them.
It began even before the fall of Tenochtitlan when I was told that Cortes had journeyed throughout the Valley of Mexico gathering support, telling the Caciques that he was only there to help them overthrow the yoke of the Azteca and regain their independence. What he achieved was that few rose to join the embattled Azteca.
Once the mighty Tenochtitlan had fallen, something that no one had believed was possible, they came to see and to marvel.
When the Castilianos had first gone to Tenochtitlan, all of The People understood that they had been invited in as guests, even if they were somewhat unwelcome guests, and when they were driven out by the effort of the Azteca, it had reinforced the view of Cemanahuac that the Azteca were invincible, and Cortes’ plea for support for a return to the Azteca capital was heard, but not credited as likely.
Now it had happened, and it was seen as something of a miracle by the Caciques. In this short time, the Masters of their world were overthrown by these strangers, and the Caciques came to see for themselves.
But Cortes had set a price on their friendship, although ‘friendship’ was not quite what was on offer. Cortes asked that they swear fealty to the Spanish Crown, and the implied threat was, bow to Cortes and his Spanish king, or the Conquistadores could be turned on them.
So they came and they marveled, and they swore, relying on Cortes’ representations that they would be independent. They did not realize that Cortes was the consummate liar, that they were replacing one set of oppressors with an even worse set.
And still we died of the ‘god’s sickness.’ The rumor began that this new god wanted all The People dead so that there would be room for the torrent of new Castilianos that were landing at the new Spanish city of Veracruz, the true cross. Sometimes it certainly seemed that way.
Now Cortes sent out his Collectors, and I, who had been taken from my village to learn to be a Collector, went out with these new Collectors, Collectors for a new oppressor.
At first we went with Spanish troops, for the Caciques were not pleased to see these new Collectors. After all, Cortes had promised independence, but, together with the soldiers, it was not hard to persuade these Caciques that there was a price to this new independence.
They all hated me when we first started, calling me ‘traitor’ and ‘false Azteca’, but that meant little to me, only that they were stupid, for my face was a map of the Land of the Deer, but I understood what they felt.
So I wandered from Mexico City down to Veracruz, and over to Oaxaca, which had all been ‘pacified’ as the Castilianos called it. As I crossed and re-crossed the land with the Collectors, I could see the changes that were made among us. For a time, my people of The Land of the Deer, what was left of them, because they too, died of the ‘god’s sickness’, would not bow to the Conquistadores, whether they came there by land from Mexico City, or landed by sea.
The new Mexico City had risen from the destruction of Tenochtitlan in less than four years, surpassing the old in magnificence and strength. The great open square that was now the center of the city, was in the same place where the huge teocalli and the palace of Motecazoma had stood. Where the temple of Huitzliopochtli was, stood the massive cathedral of St. Francis, the foundations of which were laid with broken images of the Aztec gods. On the site of the zoo was now a magnificent Franciscan convent.
On the same square, Cortes had his own splendid palace built, and all were built of solid stone taken from the sacred sites of the Azteca, in the style and with the function of fortresses. La Noche Triste had a long shadow. Churches and hospitals filled all the districts. Cortes contrived to fill the city with the great families of Spain, by liberal grants of lands and houses, and within a few years there were over two thousand families elegantly ensconced in Mexico City.
No more did the wonderful canals alternate with the causeways, for Cortes caused them to be filled and the streets to be widened where they radiated from the plaza mayor. Life, trade and manufacturing resumed in amazingly short order, and once again the city was filled with the noise and the vitality of old.
The newly established seaport of Veracruz was built because it was in a more advantageous spot than Villa Rica, and quickly took its place as the great port of entry from Spain and Cuba.
Cortes yearned to fill our lands with Castilianos, but he soon found that their delicate women were reluctant to live outside Mexico City or Veracruz, so he hit upon the scheme of liberal grants of land and municipal privileges of trade and governance. Brilliantly he conditioned those grants upon wives joining the men within eighteen months or lose the grants.
Even the great Lord Cortes reluctantly brought over his own wife from the Islands to join him, although her constitution was not suited to the climate and she most fortuitously and suspiciously died of an asthma attack within three months. In expectation of his wife coming, Cortes put aside Malinsi and their son Don Martin Cortes, marrying her off to Don Juan Xaramillio along the route of march to Honduras.

My Master Cortes, for he was by now Master of all of us, was restless and adventurous. Not satisfied with his conquest of Tenochtitlan and the area over to Veracruz, he had a fleet constructed to explore the shores of the Pacific while another was sent off toward Florida, in search of a strait connecting the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. He dispatched his lieutenants far and wide, Olid to Honduras and then on to fabled Darien, Alvarado to the lands beyond Oaxaca and on to conquer Guatemala, soon to rule, although loosely as yet, over a vast dominion from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean.
When Olid mutinied, Cortes resolved to bring him back into line, and taking one hundred and fifty of his Castilianos and three thousand Indian auxiliaries he set off on a terrible for Guatemala. Included in his retinue were Cuatemoc and the cacique of Tacuba, along with several of The Lord Chief Speaker’s Council, although I was left to continue accompanying the Collectors.
To this day, I believe that Cuatemoc and his Council were taken because Cortes did not trust them sufficiently to be left alone, and so they were in the nature of honored hostages. Surely he already had experience in such matters.
I was left with my Collectors because nothing could be allowed to interrupt the inflow of gold upon which the entire enterprise floated.
Cortes’ unbelievable journey all across the country is well known to all, and easily rivals his accomplishment in the campaign against Tenochtitlan but is not material to the telling of this tale except as it relates to Cuatemoc. It was at the beginning of Lent in the year 1525, in the middle of the frightful march, that Cortes says that he was informed of a convoluted plot under way. Formulated by Cuatemoc and his Council, they planned to overpower the Castilianos, proceed to Guatemala and overpower those Castilianos, and then raise levies throughout the country to kill every Castiliano.
Denied by Cuatemoc, his position was supported by the Council, who admitted the plot, but argued that Cuatemoc had refused to let them go forward with it.
Nevertheless, Cortes ordered the execution of everyone in Cuatemoc’s retinue, and they were hung from trees along the trail. Cuatemoc, the last of the Aztecs, is supposed to have said, “I knew what it was to trust to your false promises, Malinche; I knew that you had destined me to this fate, since I did not fall by my own hand when you entered my city of Tenochtitlan. Why do you slay me so unjustly, God will demand it of you!”
The instant I heard of the death of our last Lord Chief Speaker, I knew that the time had come for my escape from the service of Cortes. I do not believe what was said of any plot by Cuatemoc, for I would surely have known of any such plan, and it just did not exist. Cuatemoc was useful to Cortes at the beginning because his presence lent a luster to the rule of Cortes, but it was realized that there was always the danger that Cuatemoc might raise the Mexicans against the Castilianos and become a symbol, which would be difficult to overcome. Cortes’ hold had become strong enough that Cuatemoc’s value was outweighed by his danger.
Cortes’ expedition to Honduras was completed, only to find that the mutinous Olid had already been executed, and all was well with the colony. After allowing his men to recuperate, Cortes was planning to embark on a new expedition to Nicaragua when intelligence came to him from Mexico City that convinced him to return to save his conquests.
I was gone long before he returned. I had no wish to suffer the fate of my fellow members of the illustrious Council of Cuatemoc, regardless that I enjoyed the exalted title of Royal Chamberlain to an executed Emperor.
3139 words

































The Empire was poised dynamically tension
_____________________________________________________
How poignant that she is forever linked to the Mexica legend of la llorona, the desperate ghostly mother forever wailing and searching for her lost children. The fable came to be associated with the true Mexican culture bemoaning the loss of the inheritors to assimilation.
Also called Malintzin or Malinali, she of many names ended her days at the age of 24 years, far from the limelight, discarded as the wife of Don Juan Xaramillo but still remembered, maybe even excoriated, as mother to the mixed-breed nation that we know as Mexico, a true ‘melting pot’, where the steel of the Spanish was blended with the softer stuff of the indigenous peoples.
The first ‘Mexican,’ the first child born of a Spanish-Indigenous union (that we are aware of) was Malinsi’s child Don Mahin Cortes, who was later tortured and who died ignominiously hung in Mexico City as a conspirator against the viceroy.
Malinsi began life at Painalla in the vicinity of Coatzalcualcos, near present-day Veracruz on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Although born a Mexica Princess, her life segued rapidly into tragedy when her noble father died, her mother married another and Malinsi’s half-brother was born. She had become an obstacle to the passage of her father’s power and privilege to the new offspring.
Represented to their neighbors as dead. Then sold into Maya slavery by her treacherous mother. They then sold her to the Tlaxcaltecans from what is now the Tabasco area. She soon became a lexicon of both the Maya and Mexica languages, Mexica Nahuatal, being almost universal throughout the Central Americas.
Other than that, we know little of this woman, who in 10 short years changed the course of history. As Cortes wrote in a letter to the King, ‘…next to God, we have Dona Marina to thank for this victory… ‘. Without her, all the Americas might still be speaking Nahuatal.
How else would Cortes have known of the rotten infrastructure of the ‘Mexica Empire?’ How else would he have known that the ‘Empire’ was, in actuality a hostile collection of tribes that hated the Mexica for their cruelty and oppression, little realizing that they could not have really come to appreciate true oppression and cruelty until the advent of the Spanish.
Cortes’ ‘accomplishments’ were either brave, foolhardy, or criminal, depending on the eye of the beholder, but whatever they were, they would not have been possible without the information and insight gained from this little teenaged girl.
Cortes’ path to Tenochtitlan was strewn with obstacles. True, his armaments were far superior and were victorious in the pitched battles that were fought, but far more important was Malinsi, who through her peregrinations knew the tribes’ weak points, and who enabled Cortes to negotiate and cobble together a coalition against the Mexica.
Imagine if such a coalition had been with the Mexica and against the Captain. The little band would have been as nothing against the millions of warriors that could have been thrown against them. And swallowed up without trace in the vastness of Mexico, it might have been many decades before such foolishness might have been tried again.
And so the lofty Cortes ordered that she be given to Alonzo Hernando Puertocarrera, a defrocked wall-eyed priest who greatly resembled a crane.
The die was cast and the Rubicon had been crossed, Dona Marina was in the fold. Aguilar spoke Spanish and Maya while Marina spoke Maya and Nahuatal. The mechanism was in place to translate between Spanish and Nahuatal. Cortes could now speak to Mexico and Mexico would listen.
She learned Spanish so quickly that Aguilar was soon consigned to lesser duties and Malinsi became the voice of the Captain. Puertocarrera was later returned to Spain, and Cortes and Malinsi could be together.
Malinsi was now Marina, but on her way to becoming La Malinche.
Marina interpreted, translated and advised. It was she who spoke to and negotiated with the Tlaxcaltecas, the Totonacs, the Mexica and the Cholulans, and then stood by as the Cholulans were treacherously butchered to inspire terror in the rest of the tribes. It was her coalition more than it was Cortes’, because she alone knew the weak spots.
It was Marina who avoided the traps and snares that had been set for the unknowing Spanish. It was Marina who magnanimously forgave her former family, though her mere presence as a respected member of the invincible ones alone would have been enough to strike terror and envy deep into their hearts.
It was Marina, the despised and cast-off child from nowhere, of no family, no wealth, no status, no wisdom of years – it was Marina who spoke directly to the mighty Moctecazuoma for Cortes, gave orders to Moctecazuoma for Cortes and saw Moctecazuoma imprisoned and then murdered. This was the same child who would never have even been allowed to look upon his countenance.
Though only 14, she was hardly an innocent. Somehow, she had learned to grab for the ‘Main Chance’ and to hold onto it for dear life. She had lived a full life before she came to Cortes, and had been mistress to the Cacique of Tabasco. She had gone from hand to hand and was wise in the ways of men, even beyond the intelligence of women. Her history had taught her to seek the main chance, and she found it in service to Cortes.
The Conquistador had landed in an unwilling ‘protectorate’ of the Mexica, but they still owed fealty to Moctecazuoma. A brief contretemps followed, with Cortes insisting on going to Moctecazuoma, who simply wanted him to go away. And all was complicated by an inability to communicate by other than rough sign language. Marina had heard the old priest, Aguilar, speak in her own Maya tongue, and it was to the delighted Aguilar that she initially revealed her linguistic abilities.


CEMPOALLA – THE BEGINNING
It has been said that history is a compromise of lies, agreed upon by the victors, and so it is with the history of the conquest of Mexico, which often seems to border on the miraculous. All we know comes from the Spanish or those who toadied to the Spanish. We do not know of the Mexica side of the story, though much of what we are told defies logic and belief.












XVI
BOOK THE SIXTEENTH
CULTURE CLASH
BEING OF THE RISE OF HERIBERTO LAZARUS AND THE PREPARATION BY THE PROVINCIAL, DIEGO DE LANDA, FOR AN AUTO DA FE

Heriberto Lazarus, as he was quixotically named by Bishop Diego de Landa, who baptized the boy under that name, praising God that the boy had been 'raised from the dead'.
It was noticed early that the 14-year-old boy carried himself with a preternatural dignity. He was a beautiful boy, tall and well-made, but it was his air or dignity which remarked him.
What the Spanish didn't know was that the young man was a Royal emissary of the Xiu lineage who had been sent from his father, the ruler of the Maya island stronghold of Tayasal, deep in the jungle fastness of what would come to be known as Guatemala by the conquerors. Maybe emissary was too strong. What he really was, was a spy.
Heriberto knew instinctively that there was something wrong with the old Priest. It was true that priests were different, even the Maya priests were different, but this one... this one... He looked with different eyes. His eyes were blue, and among a brown-eyed people this was strange enough.
The old Priest's eyes were weak, that much was clear because of how he looked at everything too closely, but that was not it, there was more in the way that the strange priest looked at him.
The People went back to Izamal with the priests and their soldiers, there was nothing else to do.
The Franciscan monastery at Izamal appeared in front of them as if ephemeral, arising out of the morning mist. It was built atop a Maya pyramid in the standard Franciscan monastery style which had developed in Nueva España, a mixture of a contemplative milieu combined with militant defensibility, but all imposed on top of a Maya structure that had been there long before the Spanish came.
Izamal was a center of commerce, trade and military activities during the early Spanish commercial period, as it had been for a pre-Columbian political and religious center.
They came first upon the rude huts of the Indian workers that surrounded the settlement. An Indian village enveloping and acting as a first line of defense to the little patch of Spain that lay within. The monastery itself arose out of a large area of cleared, almost dead flat land, so that it was grey and sterile. Centered in this bleak tableau a massive featureless, dun-colored block squatted fatly, relieved only by a huge, iron-strapped oaken portal flanked by two tall, narrow shadowed slits.
It was only after crossing the parched earth and being apprised by the faceless guardians, that one passed through the reluctantly opened flagstone-floored passage into an almost Moorish fantasy.
Numerous rooms fronted by a colonnaded walkway lined the rectangle. Potted shrubs and trees softened the harsh flagstone pavement and rough stucco walls. The central quadrangle boasted several low, dark, rudimentary structures, originally meant as military barracks and service buildings, long since given over to the favored Indians of the Brothers, while the Spanish soldiers were quartered within the major buildings that lined the wall.
Block walks criss-crossed and meandered among carefully tended agricultural plots, the focus of all being the central baroque sandstone fountain. the water gurgling and splashing, sparkling in defiance of the fiery Yucatecan sun.
The air smelled of burning and dust. Wood. Food. Flesh. Hints of candle tallow. Vegetation. A whiff of forest fires. Dust floated on the still air. Everywhere there was the smell of burning. It was inescapable. Awake or asleep. Active or at rest. It eventually faded into the background and became undetectable.
The hot, moistness echoed with the shrieks of birds, grunting from the wild pigs in the underbrush. Women screamed and children cried, and over all was the monotonous pat-pat of old women making tortillas. A platoon of soldiers marched on parade, the sargento yelling as has been the wont of sargentos from time immemorial.
The little band straggled toward the monastery, the soldiers parcelling out the villagers among the people of the colonia as they passed through to the Franciscan monastery.
The gate swung open and the little party crossed through into the inner compound, and a new life for the newly-named Heriberto. "Heri', as he came to be called was to sleep in the cell of the Provincial. He was given a reed mat to place on the tamped-earth floor, and that was his bed. It was what was considered fitting for the savages of the jungle.
De Landa did not touch the boy, though his solicitousness was noticed and remarked upon by the Brothers. It was hardly unusual for the Brothers to take body-servants, and there was nothing untoward seen in the practice.
Indeed, De Landa himself thought little of the arrangement. There was work for the boy to do. Cleaning the tiny cell, preparing or fetching meals, running errands. He soon became a favorite within the compound, making himself useful to everyone.
If confronted with his secret thoughts and dreams, the Provincial would have been horrified, for he kept the thoughts and dreams secret even from himself, viciously resisting and suppressing them, fighting his urges and rejoicing in his rectitude, finding other outlets for his drives.
The boy watched the soldiers drilling on the bare parade ground, comparing them to his father's men back on Tayasal. At first he was awestruck, seeing these stern and hairy giants in their shining armor and boat-tailed helms, but it is hard to keep respect for those you live with and see every day. He saw the soldiers without their armor, in their dirty clothes. They smelled badly and washed little, and were an affront to the scrupulously-clean Maya. He saw them drunk and foul, and saw that they forced themselves upon the Maya women living within the monastery, even though they often kept their own women. Intoxication was not unknown among the Maya. Balché and hallucinogens were part of Maya life, but they were part of religious life and kept within harsh religious strictures. Drunkenness within community life was frowned upon and seriously punished, but the religious connotations were usually enough to keep it within bounds. Among the Spanish there seemed to be no such limits.
The Maya had long ago realized that the Spanish were not gods, but only men who could die just as any man. Heri's job was to tell his father what he could of the Spanish, for it was expected that they would soon come to Tayasal, and it would be better if it were known how to fight them.
It was not only Heri's observations alone, but those of friends that he had made among the Maya who lived within the compound or outside in the village. So Heri talked and Heri observed.
Most of all he saw the Provincial in the way that few saw him. He saw the sweat and the trembling, and was often present when the little Priest beat himself unmercifully, so he knew that De Landa was a tortured soul.
That did not excuse the viciousness with which the little Priest pursued the followers of the old gods. Heri knew that few, if any, of the Maya truly worshipped this new crucified god. They worshipped the old gods in secret, and even in the little chapel that was used by the Brothers to say Mass, there were old gods buried at the foot of the cross so that the Maya could worship in the chapel, but still venerate the old gods.
The Brothers would invade the Chozas of the People anytime, overturning everything in their search for the little statues that would reveal them as heretics, for all who were within the community had been baptized.
He even went with the Brothers on their searches, doing what he could to lead the soldiers and the priests away from the hidden statues. Once in a while they found statues, and then they would take the entire family of the house back to the monastery and to the weeping stone-walled room to meet their fate.
It was Heri who realized that the vicious priests, with their soldiers and their horses and dogs would not rest until they found what they were looking for. They wanted idols and the scrolls of the devil, and until there was some success in their mad searches, they would continue to harrass the People, overturning their houses, tearing up everything in their desperate search.
It was months before Heri became fast friends with Rodrigo, the Sargento of the little garrison. It was Rodrigo who drove the troops in their quest, but it was not Rodrigo's idea. Rodrigo hailed from the dregs of Madrid, where he had been dumped from the army after the final Spanish victory over the Muslims.
No one was aware of it, but he was a Marrano, a baptized Jew, and under the law he was forbidden to be in Nueva España, but the ships were lax and the New Spain was hungry for fresh meat, and the captains cared little if the meat were slightly spoiled. Rodrigo had military experience, and that was what was needed.
For Rodrigo, religion had no meaning, and a god was a god for all that. It had nothing to do with him. He had always been easygoing, it made the world a more comfortable place for him. Rodrigo liked the Indians, and for his part, he was ashamed of what he had to do to them, but he knew that he was but one man, and hardly in a position to take on the Religious and the secular establishment.
Rodrigo did know of a movement among the Ecomenderos to try to control the fractious Provincial because his insane crusade was causing unrest among the Indians. It was not that they cared about the Indians, they cared about their plantations, and what with the depredations visited upon what remained of the indigenous population, with the executions and the punishments, and the running away into the bush, they weren't able to get any work out of them.
The Ecomenderos were a created aristocracy made up of the grateful recipients of enormous land grants parceled out by the Spanish Crown as their reward for the Conquest.
The Ecomenderos, were following the lead of Don Ixlotl Vergera, the son of one of Cortes original band who had married the daughter of the King of T'ho, the Maya city over which the Spanish town of Merida had been erected. The very existence of Don Ixlotl should have been proof of the Spanish intent to stay in Nueva España.
The landowners had taken the unheard of step of appealing to the Audiencia in Mexico City, which had been declared the capital of New Spain by Charles V. They beseeched the powers to remove the impudent Provincial and replace him with someone more to their liking.
Unfortunately, the bureaucracy in the capital was as slow as all Spanish bureaucracy, and while the hearings and appeals to Spain continued apace, De Landa was created Bishop of Merida, and continued in his fervent prosecution of the Indian heretics.
Sergeant Rodrigo was being driven to regretted excesses by the Brothers, but in truth, it was not really their idea either. No, it all came from the fevered brain of the good Bishop.
Heri was closer to De Landa than anyone, but that was because, as a body servant, he was close to invisible. Heri realized that the little Priest was becoming more and more anxious. His anxiety drove him on, and in turn he drove the Brothers and they put pressure on Rodrigo.
Heri could see that the Bishop felt that he was failing. That he was losing control of 'his' Indians. All around him he saw, a real or imagined return to the old gods, and a turning away from the Gospel of Jesus.
The boy had become frightened of his master. Not for himself, but for The People. It was heading for some kind of a crisis, and Heri was afraid.
He had become acquainted with the head men and the Shamans throughout the region, and through them with others all through the land of the Maya, and he warned them that something was coming and they they must take steps to preserve their heritage. He asked them to hide the relics, bury them, place them in caves, send them back into the jungle, to places where the Spanish had not reached. He said that the island of Tayasal was still safe.
He knew of the sacred scrolls and also knew that the Spanish priests burned them when they were found. He urged that they be carefully packed in airtight earthenware jars and buried in safe places or in caves. It might be necessary to keep them safe until the Spanish left. The Indians never doubted that someday the Spanish would leave and return home to Spain. Then came Heri's stroke of genius. Thinking that it might be possible to divert the Bishop, he began an endeavor that was to continue for many years, fulfilling a need that only Heri was wise enough to recognize.
He urged the Indians to begin the manufacture of crude idols and even cruder imitations of the sacred scrolls. It would be easy to do the scrolls, the Spanish couldn't read them anyway, and since they would be burned immediately, there was little danger that they would be sent back to Mexico City, where there was always the possibility that they might be discovered to be fakes.
He knew that if they could glut the foolish priests, the destruction of their inheritance might be averted, and the Brothers and the soldiers could be directed toward the fakes.
It worked in a way, but not in the way that had been anticipated. Suddenly there were idols and scrolls everywhere. The soldiers were pleased. Rodrigo was pleased. The Brothers were estatic, but to the Bishop, it was proof of what he had feared most. The movement to the old gods was growing, and a demonstration was called for.
He ordered that the destruction of the idols and the burning of the scrolls be halted and that they should be gathered together in one place and safeguarded against recovery by the Indians. De Landa looked to Mani. It was not a major center, like Merida or Valladolid, but one of the smaller towns near the ruins of Mayapan, the last of the occupied Maya centers. Mani had been the refuge to which the Xius of Uxmal retreated after the fall of Mayapan, but the time of Xius was long past, except that Heri was a distant relative.
Less than 100 kilometers from the monastery at Izamal, Mani had the advantage of being a relatively isolated town. At least it was isolated in the terms of the Spanish, but it was the marketplace for an entire region of relatively untamed Maya, and thus a place for an object lesson. And it had an excellent Zocalo, a plaza in front of the church that was large enough to accomodate De Landa's plan.
The Bishop planned an Auto de fé, a formal demonstration of faith that was a favorite weapon of the Inquisition. The Bishop was not of the Inquisition, and he lacked the authority to conduct an Auto de fé, but that had never stopped De Landa where matters of faith were concerned.
The invisible Heri was present when the Bishop discussed the matter with the Brothers and the soldiers, and he knew of the plans. The Brothers and the soldiers were to round up as many Indians they could find, and as many heretics that they could add to the 20 or so that were already chained in a barracks at Izamal.
By that time, Heri was able to assist Rodrigo in the gathering up of heretics who would not be missed by the People. He also aided in piling up enough of the counterfeit idols to satisfy the greedy Bishop. He was especially pleased that Rodrigo had been able to find 24 of the sacred scrolls. De Landa even thought that they were real.
Putting on an Auto de fé was no picnic, particularly when it was almost 100 kilometers away. There were all those dignitaries to invite, whether they came or not. And then there was the food to prepare and the wine to obtain and present properly in the feasts that were to be held for the elect both before and after the performance.
"The silver!" thought the Bishop. "Can't forget the silver. Have to make a proper showing for the Alcaldé and the merchants of the town.'
'Oh, and don't forget to invite the Ecomenderos. Can't forget them. After all, many of the guests of honor will be their workers, and then they'll see, then they'll understand what it is to have nurtured these wolves at the very throat of Our Lord.'
'We will have the Indians gather the wood for the fire. Pile it high. Build the platform for the dignitaries’ he said feverishly. Oh yes, it will be remembered for generations of these savages. They'll see. They'll all see the power of the Lord. I will be vindicated.
De Landa bustled away to order his calligrapher to pull out the finest parchment and sharpen his goose quills to prepare the invitations for the religious and secular attendees, the leading lights of Nueva España, no pureblood Indians need apply.
There were 37 heretics of one stripe or another. There were eight candidates for relaxing to the enforcement representatives of the Ayuntamiento of Merida, which was the nearest municipality of sufficient and competent jurisdiction. The stars of the show were the twelve Caciques, twelve village headmen, all of whom had confessed under torture. Provincial De Landa was very proud of the Caciques.
The Brothers who had obtained the confessions were also extremely proud. After all, they had worked very hard to get the Caciques to confess. The Caciques were being held in the purpose-built cells within the compound at Izamal.
The Brothers had been extremely inventive, the tender ministrations of the good Brothers killed some under torture, luckily none of the Caciques. Some of the accused heretics, in the zeal of the Brothers to extract confessions, were left without arms or even hands to eat with.
Still others were just shorn and beaten, then forced to wear penitential robes, what the Brothers called the 'Holy Sack'. Naturally some of the accused were obdurate, and for those the Brothers delighted in hanging them by pulleys with stones of 50 or 75 pounds hung from their feet, and while they were suspended gave them many lashes until the blood ran from their shoulders and legs. Then too, some were tarred with boiling fat. They found that a very effective method of inducing eager volubility was the application of the melted wax of lit candles dripped on their bare parts.The friars excommunicated those who opposed them. No small punishment in a rigidly religious community.
Of course, the people of their villages were gone. As well were the people of the additional two villages where accused Caciques had killed themselves. De Landa announced that the Indians, deluded by the devil, had hung themselves out of grief.
He somehow failed to announce that one of the Caciques, Ixcawatzin, had already undergone two sessions of the water treatment, where he had been forced to drink gallons of water, and then while he was stretched out on the dirt floor in pain, one of the larger brothers had been encouraged to jump on the Cacique's stomach until blood and water poured from his mouth and anus. They had not been successful with his confession. The other accursed suicide had merely been flogged.
The inhabitants of those villages had disappeared off into the jungle. The People of the entire district were on the edge of an out-and-out revolt. They were demanding the release of the leaders that had been taken from them. De Landa had called upon the Audiencia in Guatemala for additional troops, and 200 sailors had been sent, although why there should have been sailors in Guatemala was a question that begged an answer.
And then there were the Ecomenderos. The Haciendados were almost in revolt themselves. It was their people who had absented themselves from the fields and the harvest. It was their crops that were rotting in the fields, and it was all because of this cabrón of a Provincial who had chosen this moment in time to play God.
Not only had De Landa become a problem, but Padre Bobadillo, far off and on an idolatry rampage of his own, had set a gigantic bonfire in the great Zocalo of Valladolid, and then threatened to burn the town governor and then the entire town unless the idols were turned over to him.
This was the atmosphere that prevailed as the preparations for De Landa's Auto-da-fé were made.




























XVII






















Book the seventeenth
-Auto da fe-
Being of the ceremony of the holy office of the inquisition


Damn Diego De Landa. Friar and Provincial of Izamal. Destroyer of artifacts and codices. Writer of the self-serving Relacion de las Cosas de Yucatan, only a portion of which survived. Since he is supposed to have destroyed the heritage of the Maya, most of what we know of the Maya comes from his book. He was later Bishop of the Yucatan and Protector of the Indians. Damn him.
It was a seven pm on the evening of the eighteenth day of August in 1562 when the procession started. It started on time. De Landa insisted upon it. The Zocalo at Mani had the look of a typical Spanish town square. It was dominated by the Church, mostly constructed of blocks taken from Maya religious structures. The square was paved with rough slabs, surrounded by governmental and ecclesiastical buildings, and shaded by ancient eucalyptus trees, most of which had been cut back for an unobstructed view. Ironically, in the center was a pyramid of wooden faggots. Ironically because Mani had been the religious center for the lesser Xiu empire, where the mighty Xius had retreated after the fall of Mayapan, so this faux pyramid unknowlingly mocked the greater pyramids of Mayapan.
In the square was the smell of fear and pitch-pine torches.
The zocalo was ablaze with the light of torches which threw a flickering light over the empty faces of the Indians held under guard by the squat, ugly figures of the Audiencia's sailors. A large wooden platform festooned with scaffolds and a row of heavy chairs for dignitaries, had been built opposite the church, and in front of the platform were chairs for the Ecomenderos and Spanish civilians. It was the platform that was the destination of the procession.
First came the Sargento Rodrigo, marching in front of his soldiers, their armor gleaming and clamking rhythmically in the torchlight, followed by the column, which was flanked by files of soldiers on each side. They marched to the sound of a single trap drum. Then came the religious, headed by the Provincial walking alone, smiling beatifically, and blessing the onlooking Indians from side-to-side. Heri followed on behind him carrying a huge, leather-bound bible held high.
The Brothers were behind the two of them, just walking together with their acolytes rather than marching in any military fashion.
Behind them came the puffed-up local officials, the Alcaldé Mayor de Merida and the Alguacil Mayor, beaming at the Spanish and waving to their acquaintances.
Then came the gentlemen of the Ayuntamiento, trying desperately to comport themselves in a military fashion, but succeeding only in imitating a gaggle of waddling geese.
The heretics followed. All dressed in yellow 'Holy Sacks' and tall, pointed sambenito hoods. The onlooking Indians moaned and wailed as they went by. Hooded as they all were, there was no way to tell who the Caciques were, but just the sight of Maya cast in the robes of shame and chained together was enough for the onlookers, and they wept openly.
The Inquisition was actually a performance with several acts. The first part was the Sermon, which was in the nature of a trial, usually a mere formality, and a finding of some degree of heresy.
This was usually followed at a later date by an Auto-da-fé. This was the ceremony during which the sentences of the Inquisition were read, and it was definitely a ceremony.
First came the nighttime, torchlit procession of members of the Holy Office, together with their familiars and agents, followed by the accused persons who had confessed their guilt and declared their penitence. The penitents wore yellow floor length robes and tall yellow sambenitos and corozas, yellow pointed hoods with eyeholes.
Then followed a solemn Mass, then an oath of obedience to the Inquisition taken by all the lay functionaries who might have to carry out the sentences.
The highlight of the ceremony was a sermon by the Grand Inquisitor, which included a reading of the sentences of condemnation or acquittal, delivered by the Holy Office.
Then there was the formal handing over of impenitent persons and those who had relapsed to the secular powers. While their punishment usually took place some time after Auto-da-fé, De Landa was not that much of a stickler for the rules.
It was only when the truly damned were out of the way that the punishments could begin. Where there was a confession or a conviction of guilt of lesser misdeeds, the punishments meted out might range from a mere recitation of prayers, through fasting, almsgiving, flogging, and all the way to forced pilgrimages
Ah, but for more serious heresy, there were more serious entertainments. These ranged from the forced wearing of a yellow cross, on to varying terms of imprisonment, confiscation of property and then on to the most serious of punishments the Church itself could hand out, life imprisonment. Life imprisonment was generally imposed on those who confessed under torture as well as upon those who recanted after being sentenced to death.
But that left the condemned heretics who stubbornly refused to recant, even though the Church spared no effort or torture to convince the heretic to recant. Then to, there were those who relapsed after condemnation and repentance. The Church washed their hands of them, and 'relaxed' them over to the secular arm for punishment.. The Grand Inquisitor also handed over the sentences (usually death) to be carried out by the secular powers.
In handing over the heretic, the Inquisitor, using a legal formula, asked that the sentence be carried out without shedding blood or endangering life. This was intended to influence the condemned to ask for mercy and to emphasize the fact that the church itself did not shed blood.
Burning was a common method of execution and much feared by The People, so they were offered a way to avoid the fiery death. They were given the opportunity to recant at the last moment. They would still be executed, but at least their death would be by garrotte before their lifeless bodies were burned.
After the heretics marched another phalanx of soldiers.
The procession came to the platform and the religious followed by the dignitaries climbed the stairs and took their seats, while the heretics were forced to their knees before the stage, with the soldiers standing over them.
Then came the protracted silence while everyone settled down and the natural tension built. Provincial De Landa rose from his seat and came to the edge of the platform where he stood, a scroll of parchment in his hands as he intoned the sins of the heretics.
In a dramatic gesture, his face fevered and sweating in the firelight, he commanded the burning of the relapsed ones who had died before the Auto-da-fé, including the two suicided Caciques. This, of course, meant that the bodies of the Caciques and the other dead heretics had been disinterred from their graves, but the up side was that the bodies of suppurating fat flared like torches upon the flaming pyre onto which they had been tossed like the offal that they were.
The nauseating smell of burning, rotten flesh wafted across the square.
It was a fitting inauguration for a religious ceremony, and had the added advantage of leaving the pyre burning brightly as a wonderful backdrop, and it cast the light of hell upon the faces of the condemned.
De Landa started up with the small punishments, the floggings and minor imprisonments, and after the preliminaries were over, he invited the guests to throw the large pile of idols and artifacts onto the fire. They all had a wonderful time, drinking, yelling and throwing the artifacts to crash amidst the bones of the heretic skeletons in front of the stolid faces of the captive Indians.
It was a while before they all settled down to again hear De Landa intone the horrific litany of the heretical crimes committed by the more serious of the backsliders, including allegations of blood sacrifices. These caused expressions and outcries of outrage as De Landa painted his word pictures leading up to the punishments. Life Imprisonment was a favorite of the Provincial, but severely lacking in dramatic values.
He and the Alguacil Mayor had known that the minor punishments would only be a lull in the proceedings, so they decided to spice it up with the burning of the codices, together with the estimable Provincial's free-wheeling translation of these 27 works of the devil. In his heart of hearts he was disappointed that the Maya were not more disturbed than they appeared to be. They seemed to endure the burning of the codices, and for that matter even the smashing of the idols with the same stolid mien, as if discomfitted only by their forced attendance.
Heri was pleased by the fact that it was only the crude forgeries that were destroyed, while the real artifacts and codices were safe and miles away from the crazy priest.
But the spectators loved the show, even if the Ecomenderos were ever more concerned about the effect that the Auto-da-fé would have on their workers.
A favorite of the evening was a demonstration that had been arranged by the Provincial. Several eager Friars hung a recalcitrant heretic up by his wrists. It was then that they started tying the weights to his feet while he screamed in agony. Indians may have been stolid, but under severe pain, they reacted like every other human being.
It was unfortunate that De Landa had chosen one of the Caciques, and upon seeing him humiliated and tortured, the Maya gave voice to their outrage and started pressing against the line of sailors that was holding them back. Buoyed by the strident voice of the Provincial, the sailors forced the Maya back with their pikes at port arms, pushing for all they were worth.
It was only a matter of time before the line of sailors broke, but the Alguacil Mayor had forseen the possibility and the deafening crash of the falconets firing chain shot momentarily silenced the frenzied Indians and allowed the soldiers to move in with leveled pikes and swinging swords, behind them were the harquebusquiers firing shards of glass and stones into massed ranks of Maya until they finally fell back and allowed the festivities to proceed.
By then, the Maya were noisy and unruly, and even the Ecomenderos seemed somewhat upset. It was all the soldiers and sailors could do to keep the Indians at bay. But De Landa was adamant that the Auto-da-fé would continue to impress upon the attendees, both the gravity of heresy, as well as the will and the might that would be brought to bear upon the backsliders. All to the greater glory of God, and Provincial Diego De Landa.
By the time the Cacique had 60 pounds of weights hanging off each foot, he had passed out, and this had allowed the somewhat nervous attending friars to announce that the man had confessed and it was to be hoped that the penitent one would survive to live in the presence of the light. There didn't seem to be a very high likelihood.
Three penitents were mercifully hung on the scaffolds on the platform. They took a pleasingly long time to die, and their empurpling faces lent a touch of color to the festivities.
Since the Alguacil Mayor and the Sargento, as well as the Teniente de soldados de marina, came both seperately and together to advise the Provincial that it was rapidly coming to the time when the Indians could no longer be controlled, and that therefore it would be advisable to bring the proceedings to a close before they were all forced to fight for their lives. Nevertheless, De Landa did take the time to burn three relapsed former and once-again heretics atop the flaming pyre. The scent of roasting flesh and excrement was a miasma floating over the scene.
Ecomenderos were already beginning to leave, in spite of the fact that the Provincial had not yet given his benediction.
All in all, De Landa was extremely pleased by the whole performance.

But the General of the San Franciscan Order in Spain had by now heard more than enough of the depredations of his Franciscans in the Yucatan. He resolved to clear the situation and urgently applied to His Majesty to have a bishop appointed for the Yucatan. Apparently, the situation in the Yucatan had already reached the ears of the King, and the request of the General was answered almost immediately by the appointment of another Franciscan, Don Fray Francisco de Toral, as Bishop of the Yucatan. Fray de Toral, who had been on an assignment in Mexico City, proceeded directly to Campeche to take over his duties, and to usurp the powers of De Landa, and to send the Provincial back to Spain for proceedings against him.
Toral originally lodged in the convent, but his treatment at the hands of the Brothers, who were of the Order and who had been complicit in the actions involving the Indians, was such that he was forced to remove himself to the house of Don Lorenzo Avila, a civilian, until he could clean out the nest of vipers that inhabited the convent.
The ex-Provincial Diego De Landa was in Spain from 1962 until 1573, first in hearings before the Council of the Indies and then in front of the Franciscan tribunal of Fray Pedro de Bobadilla, Provincial of Castile, under orders of the King to investigate and perform justice. This worthy convened seven learned persons, including De Landa's friend and mentor, the licenciate Tomás López, who had been Auditor in Guatemala as well as a judge in the Yucatan. It could be said that it was under his directives that De Landa was proceeding in the Yucatan.
Even after the humiliating actions of Toral in reversing the effects of Franciscan domination, De Landa was sufficiently assured to complain of Toral's actions, both to Mexico City, and to Spain as well.
The crack in this wall of confidence was the letter of Diego Rodriguez Bibanco, by royal appointment, Defender of the Indians of Yucatan, sent to the King on March 8, 1563. Following his mandate, he wrote:
Diego Rodriguez Bibanco, citizen of Merida in Yucatan, Defender of the Indians of this province, named by your majesty as granted in your royal Audiencia of the Confines, whereby it is my obligation to report to your majesty on their needs and grievances, herein give the harm that has been done to them by wounds, deaths, losses and disturbances.
What happens is that the friars of the order of San Francisco in this province used the ecclesiastical jurisdiction before the bishop's arrival, saying they had the power by apostolic bulls to do this in places where there are no bishops; and in this title, good or bad, using the said bulls, which it is understood did not give them the right to do what they have done, they gave orders to proceed against the Indians of all these provinces, generally, por via de inquisicion, the Provincial constituting himself Inquisitor, and accompanied by the subordinate friars who also served as inquisitors; and together or singly they have inflicted irregularities and punishments on these Indians never heard of in all the Indies, under color of and saying that they were idolaters.
And in order to have more power and force than they had, they called for aid from the alcalde mayor of the province, doctor Diego Quijada, whom your majesty sent here two years ago more or less; he inconsiderately, being a weak man of little judgement or prudence, gave them lay judges who carried out all that the friars directed; this without any process, nor fault in the Indians, whereby the royal aid was given solely on the information of the idiot friars, some of whom do not even know how to read.
And so, with the power they claimed as ecclesiastical judges, and that which your Justice gave them, they set about the business with great rigor and atrocity, putting the Indians to great tortures, of ropes and water, hanging them by pulleys with stones of 50 or 75 pounds to their feet, and so suspended gave them many lashes until the blood ran to the ground from their shoulders and legs; besides this they tarred them with boiling fat as was the custom to do to negro slaves, with the melted wax of lit candles dripped on their bare parts; all this without preceding information, or seeking first for the facts. This seemed to them the way to learn them.
The poor Indians, weak and miserable, afflicted and maltreated, in fear of the torture, while under the torture confessed irregularities they have neither committed nor thought of, saying they were idolaters, and had quantities of idols, and had even sacrificed human beings and done other great cruelties; all being false and stated in fear and for the pain they had suffered.
Thus they brought in a great quantity of idols they had in ancient buildings and the woods and caves, already left and forgotten, and said that they now had and used them; on which confessions, without listening to the Indians or to their Defender, or making any verification beyond what came by the tortures, they sheared them, beat and punished them, usually every one in the pueblos they visited. Some individuals, leading caciques and persons, they condemned to ten years slavery more or less; put on them the penitential sambenito garments of the Inquisition, banished them from their signories and towns, and made them slaves, and so treated them. From all they also exacted fines of two, three or more ducats, and from the common people two or four reales, by which they collected great sums of money; and in this way they did with most of the Indians where the Inquisition and punishment were instituted. They made two Autos of Inquisition, erecting high tablets and banners with insignia, such as your majesty's Inquisitors use, putting great numbers of Indians in the province in the corozas (shame headdresses) and sambenitos, and declared it was necessary in the case.
From all which, and much more I cannot tell your majesty for the prolixity, the great harm to the Indians resulted; for seeing the things, they fled many to tyhe forests, others hung themselves in despair, many others were left wounded without hands or feet, and many others died of the tortures inflicted. Thus the whole country was afflicted, aroused, oppressed and maltreated, until last August the bishop, don fray Francisco de Toral arrived, named by your majesty as prelate and pastor for this province; who took on himself the matter and the state of things he found, and before whom I, in the name of the Indians, asked relief.
This I could not do before, because the friars laid public excommunication upon any person who opposed them, saying this was improper, and interfered with the Holy Office of the Inquisition, because it was the royal Justice who gave the chief favor to the friars. Thus I could not use my office, for they deprived me of liberty; only by letter could I admonish them, but these did no good. Before the bishop, who heard the charges without passion and with Christian zeal, I laid the charges and showed the Indians molested without fault; thus a great number held in prison were freed; the sambenitos taken off, they were taken from the slavery imposed, and wherein they were, and the land was quieted, when it was without doubt at the stage of dissolution.
All this put the friars to great pain, knowing the wrong they had done, without order or justice; and thus they tried in every way to find faults in the Indians, to show that it had all been necessary. To this end I am advised that they secured proofs by rewards. The alcalde mayor presented witnesses to testify that he was a good governor, speaking in his defense and that of the friars, and declaring that the punishments had not been severe, and the like. Desiring to excuse themselves before your majesty, they took pains to get statements in their favor, saying that it was all in the service of God our Lord and your majesty, and that they were not guilty, seeking to do you wrong, that you might not give remedy.
So it would be useless unless your majesty should provide a judge who would hear all, as I tell your majesty and have proven to the bishop, and will prove when called upon, and should relieve these poor people of the wrongs inflicted with no fault done by them: attacks, killings, loss and destruction of their houses and property, banishment. I in the name of these poor ones in my charge, and of the other Indians of these provinces, complain before your majesty as I can, as is my duty, and beg with all the proper respect that you grant the needed remedy and justice to these Indians; and against the alcalde mayor, who has done so great harm; and against your ministers and friars who have done it, that they be punished either by your prelates or those who should do this, and remove them from this land, in which they ever hold hatred against the Indians, since they cannot go on with that they have done; the same the alcalde mayor who seeks all kinds of vexations to prevent their speaking or complaining of what has happened, so that they are put in fear and afraid, wherein I fear rebellion and destruction.
Thus I humbly implore your majesty that you order it remedied, in the service of God our Lord and the good of these poor ones and the service of your majesty. I am not sending the processes of what took place and was done before the bishop, for they are long and costly. Your majesty will understand the truth from what the bishop will inform you, and what he shall say in justice as a servant of Our Lord and zealous in his and your majesty's service, and for these poor ones. May Our Lord guard the sacred Catholic and royal person of your majesty for many years, with the increase of lands and dominions.
That your majesty be advised, I ask the royal secretary of the council of this city to attach the certificate that I am such Defender of the Indians. Sacred Catholic royal majesty, I kiss your royal feet.
Your humble vassal,
DIEGO RODRIGUEZ BIBANCO

On February 12, 1567, Melchior Pech, the governor of the Samahil province, Juan Pech and Juan Ek, town governor of Suma, Pedro Pech, town governor of Kini, and Luis Pech, town governor of Moxop'ip', supposedly sent a letter to King Charles in Spain, as follows:
Because we, your majesty's vassals, all understand the desire your majesty has that we shall be saved, and to provide sufficient ministers in your majesty's dominions to enlighten, instruct and teach those who are ignorant, and that although far from those realms of Castile, your majesty has the same care for us as if we were near, and that it is your pleasure and care that we be told what is most truly needed, according to our inferiority and capacity, and our poverty in temporal goods; Wherefore we make known before your majesty that from the beginning of our conversion to Christianity we have been taught the doctrine by the Franciscan friars, and they have preached and in their poverty do preach and teach us the law of God. We love them as true fathers, and they love us as true sons, and because of sufferings and infirmities and persecutions of the demon, they have been very few in this country, and since no others arrive, as it is so far from the land of Castile.
For this cause we beg that you will have compassion on our souls, and will send us Franciscan friars who will guide us and teach us in the way of God; and especially those of them who have been in this country, and went back from here to Castile, those who know well our language in which to preach and teach us; they are called fray Diego de Landa, fray Pedro Gumiel of the province of Toledo, and especially fray Diego de Landa for he is great, sufficient, worthy and good in the eyes of our Father God, who calls on us much to be Christians; Miguel de la Puebla and the other padres, as many as you see good to send. And because we understand that jointly and quickly we may do service whereby your majesty with Christian heart desires us all good, and so we trust that we may be quickly aided by your majesty, whom may God shine on and ever increase your vision in his service.
Here in Yucatan on the twelfth day of February of the year 1567.
We are subject in your majesty's realm and kiss your majesty's sacred hands.
Several exact duplicates of this letter, in the same Maya wording and handwriting, as well as the Spanish translation, were sent to the King, and this raised some eyebrows as to their expression of true Maya sentiment.
The Maya wording was particularly interesting because before De Landa came to power as a Provincial, he had been a scholar of the Maya, and had even prepared a Maya dictionary. This is not to say that De Landa wrote the letters, but his facility with the Maya language, as well as all the copies apparently being exact copies of each other, certainly gives rise to questions without answers.
Apparently generated by the former letter, it was followed by an actual letter from Francisco de Montejo Xiu, the Governor of Mani and other town governors, sent on April 12, 1967. This letter told a little more, and a little different part, of the story.
Sacred Catholic Majesty:
After we learned the good, in knowing God our Lord as the only true god, leaving our blindness and idolatries, and your majesty as temporal lord, before we can well open our eyes to the one and to the other, there came upon us a persecution of the worst that can be imagined; and it was in the year '62, on the part of the Franciscan religious, who had taken us to teach the doctrine, instead of which they began to torment us, hanging us by our hands and whipping us cruelly, having weights of stone on our feet, torturing many of us on a windless, giving the torture of the water, from which many died or were maimed.
Being in these tribulations and burdens, trusting in your majesty's Justice to hear and defend us, there came the Dr. Quijada to aid our tormentors, saying that were were idolators and sacrificers of men, and many other things against all truth, which we never committed during our time of blindness and infidelity. And as we see ourselves maimed by cruel torture, many dead of them, robbed of our property, and yet more, seeing disinterred the bones of our baptised ones, who died as Christians, we come to despair.
Not content with this, the religious (i.e. the friars) and they royal Justice, held at Mani a solemn auto of inquisition, where they seized many statues, disinterred many dead and burned them there in public; made slaves of many to serve Spaniards for from eight to ten years, and placed the sambenitos.The one and the other gave us great wonder and fear, because we did not know what it all was, having been recently baptised, and not informed; and when we returned to our people and told them to hear and guard justice, they seized us, put us in prison and chains, like slaves, in th monastery at Merida, where many of us died; and they told us we would be burned, without our knowing the why.
At this came the bishop whom your majesty sent, who, although he took us from prison and relieved us from death and the sambenitos, has not relieved us from the shame of the charges that were made against us, that we were idolaters, human sacrificers, and had slain many men; because, at the last, he is of the habit of San Francisco and does for them. He has consoled us by his words, saying that your majesty would render justice.
A receptor came from Mexico, and made inquiry, and we believe it went to the Audiencia, and nothing has been done.
Then came as governor don Luis de Cespedes, and instead of relieving us he has increased our burdens, taking away our daughters and our wives to serve the Spaniards, against their will and ours; which we feel so greatly that the common people say that not in the time of our fidelity were we so vexed or maltreated, because our ancestors never took from one of his children, nor from husbands and wives to make use of them, as does you majesty's Justice, even to the service of the negros and mulattos.
And with all our afflictions and labors, we have loved the fathers and supplies their necessities, have built many monasteries for them, provided with ornaments and bells, all at our cost and that of our vassals and fellows; although in payment of our services they have made of us their vassals, have deprived us of our signories we inherited from our ancestors, a thing we never suffered in the time of our infidelity. And we obey your majesty's justice, hoping that you will send us remedy.
One thing that has greatly dismayed us and stirred us up, is the letters written by fray Diego de Landa, chief author of all those ills and burdens, saying that your majesty had approved the killings, robberies, tortures, slaveries and other cruelties inflicted on us; to which we wonder that such things should be said of so Catholic and upright a king as is your majesty. If it is told that we have sacrificed men after that we have received baptism, it is a great and false witness invented by them to gild their cruelties.
And if there have been or are idols among us, they are but those we have gathered to send to the religious as they required of us, saying that we had confessed to their possession under the torture; but all know that we went many leagues to gather them from places where we knew that they had been kept by those before us, and which we had abandoned when we were baptised; and in good conscience they should not punish us as they have done.
If your majesty wishes to learn of all, send a person to search the truth, to learn of our innocence and the great cruelty of the padres; and had not the bishop come, we should all have been brought to an end. And though we cherish well Fray Diego and the other padres who torment us, only to hear them named causes our entrails to revolt. Therefore, your majesty, send us other ministers to teach us and preach to us the law of God, for we much desire our salvation.
The religious of San Francisco of this province have written several letters to your majesty and to the general of the order, in praise of fray Diego de Landa and his other companions, who were those who tortured, killed, and put us to scandal; and they gave certain letters written in the Castilian language to certain Indians of their familiars, and thus they signed them and sent them to your majesty. May your majesty understand that they are not ours, we who are chiefs of this land, and who did not have to write lies nor falsehoods or contradictions. May fray Diego de Landa and his companions suffer the penance for the evils they have done to us, and may our descendants to the fourth generation be recompensed the great persecution that came on us.
May God guard your majesty for many years in his sacred service and for our good and protection. From the Yucatan, the 12th of April, 1567.
Your majesty's humble vassals kiss your royal hands and feet.
The stage was set for the De Landa hearings, and the sides were clearly drawn, but a wild card was introduced by De Landa, in the form of his book, the very book that provided the bulk of the history and culture of the pre-conquest Maya, Relacion de los Cosas de Yucatan. It is a strange book, part history, part apologia, part work of ethnology, and part brief for the Defense.
There is little doubt that it played a major part in his case, but why did he write it, and what was in the mind of this complicated man?






































XVIII
BOOK THE EIGHTEENTH
-CENTAUR-
WHEREIN PROVINCIAL DIEGO DE LANDA TAUGHT ME THE TRUE MEANING OF THE SPANISH INVASION OF MY LAND THROUGH THE ALLEGORY OF A BULLFIGHT

It was not De Landa's idea, he wanted nothing to do with it. But that didn't seem to matter. It was Cervantes' idea. Cervantes, the henequen merchant. Cervantes who had made a fortune out of the green and golden sisal plant that was used throughout the world for the hemp rigging so necessary for the sailing ships that plied the oceans of the world. Of course, it didn't hurt that the indians worked for next to nothing on the labor-intensive plantation that Cervantes had carved out of the Yucatecan jungle.
Miguel Cervantes was not one of Cortes' conquistadores. He was not one of the swaggering conquerors that had subdued entire nations. No, Cervantes was a lawyer from the Court of King Francis at Sevilla. He'd bought the encomienda for next to nothing from the conquistador who had already drunk and whored away his portion, and hardly needed some farm in the god-forsaken Indies.
Miguel Cervantes had the vision to see the possibilities, but he found it boring there among the savages, so he used some of his enormous profits to bring the Rejoneador and his horses from Spain for the entertainment of his fellow encomienderos and the aggrandizement of Don Miguel Cervantes.
Dona Maria had been horrified at the expense. She had begged him to reconsider. Oh, if he must, he could bring over some down-at-heels matador. They could find picadors and banderilleras among the hangers-on. Surely it was not necessary to transport the horses! But Don Miguel would not hear of it. It must be the Rejoneador and his horses. Only the Rejoneador would fully establish Don Miguel as of the highest status.
He brought his people to Muna to build the Plaza de Toros. It would have been less expensive to have constructed a makeshift bull ring, but that would not do for Don Miguel. Only a permanent ring would do and it would be a legacy which would proclaim how great a man Don Miguel Cervantes was.
Ten tiers high, they made it, the first tier being the boxes for the dignitaries. The box for the Presidente was set up on the fourth tier on the sombra side, and large enough for an entire entourage. There were arches and whitewashed stucco, just as there had been in Spain. It was the first bullring in Nueva España.
There had never been bulls in Nuevo España and the Indians were terrified of them. Even If there were cattle in the country that had been brought over to breed, there were no bulls like the ones that had been imported from Spain for the Rejoneador.
Its name was Embajador and weighing over 1100 pounds, it was huge and bulky in the front while its hindquarters were quick and agile. The horns were a flattened classic 'u' and the right one had a recently broken tip that left a sharp jagged weapon. The broken horn distressed the beast. The horns were related to a cat's whiskers; they were needed to guide the bull, and suddenly they were missing, and the bull was angry and disoriented, not a good state for a bull to be in.
Embajador restlessly paced the corral, intimidating the cows that had been placed there to pacify the bulls, leaving them to huddle against the rough wooden fence as the setting sun cast ever-longer shadows across the sand.
Diego De Landa attended the corrida the next afternoon. Everyone did, at least everyone who was Spanish. There were even a few of the civilized Indians there. It was enough to fill the venue and then some. De Landa and Heriberto got to sit in the President's box with Don Miguel, who was understandably excited about the turnout, but De Landa was more interested in conveying his view of the world to his young acolyte.
"So, Heriberto, now you will see, in this one celebration, the power of Spain and Christianity played out as a parable. I no longer think of you as a pagan for I have seen you become more and more civilized, even as I have watched you grow and mature in your faith. You have been able to see and understand all that Spain and Christianity can bring to your people, and in what you are about to witness is an affirmation that you can carry back to your people.'
`The rider of the horse is Spain, tall and proud, brave and enterprising, pitted against a brutish beast that is larger and stronger than he is, but is doomed to defeat by the superior intelligence and strategies of the courageous Spaniard. Mark you well the progress of this confrontation, for as it goes in the ring, so shall it be enacted on the pages of history. This is Spain's century, and nothing will stand before her!"
Heriberto listened, but as the confrontation progressed, he began to see clearly that the bull was steadfast and honest, but that the Spaniard on horseback was duplicitous and counterfeit. It became clear and that the bull was being defeated by trickery and misdirection. That it was being tortured beyond endurance to finally be coldly murdered by the scuttling puntillero who crept up on the wounded creature from the blind side and in a most cowardly act, plunged the knife in to cut the spinal cord, killing the bull just as surely as if it were a puppet whose strings had been cut.
Heriberto could see the parallels all right, but what he deduced from the proceedings was considerably different from what De Landa wanted. Heriberto was determinably and understandably on the side of the bull, wishing only to mentally impart to the poor beast some of the deceit necessary to prevail in the contest.
The spectacle started at sunset. so the sun would not be in the matador's eyes as he faced the bull.
The sun was fading from powder-blue cloudlessness as the shadows crept across the circle. Liquid, brassy notes drifted over the arena to sound the first tercio. A blackness burst across the sand, a blacker shadow within a shadow, hooves booming a drumbeat in the sudden silence. 5,000 voices struck dumb by a power, by a living threat. The shrill giggle of a woman momentarily pierced the mood.
A wicked horn thunked into the red-painted barrera with a sound that reverbrated throughout the arena.
A jagged wooden shard suddenly showed bone white, prised free with a toss of the nightmare head as Embajador wheeled to continue his rampaging circuit of the sanded circle there in Muna.
The watchers of the torero's cuadrillo critically judged the moves and feints of the 1000 pound monster as it careered around the ring,
The Rejoneador sat tall and rigidly upright on his magnificent chestnut stallion Aldebaran, watching eagle-eyed from behind and over the closed gate. He, close-clad in a beautifully cut gray whipcord suit, called the Traje Corto Andalusia from the place where it originated, and he wore the traditional flat-topped black hat, the Sombrero Cordobes, square upon his head, the insolent pigtail clearly showing underneath.
Wavy jet-black hair and aristocratically Spanish features belied the 34 years and more than 50 corridas of Juan Hermoso de Valenciana.
Man and mount together. Aldebaran was only one of the four superb thoroughbreds that were the real stars of the show. Still to be seen were; the ebony Mazzantini, white flowers entwined in his mane, white star on his forehead dripping down onto his muzzle; the dazzlingly white Chicuelo, his mane sporting black flowers; and the crowd favorite, Cagancho, a huge dapple gray horse, stolid and phlegmatic. Each of them had been painstakingly trained together with their rider to perform one of the very distinct acts leading to the inevitable taurine death, but to do it in an exhibition of flawless horsemanship, of prancing, bowing and breathtaking leaps.
The Rejoneador is a very different kind of torero. Not for him the brilliance of the suit of lights, or the massive implacable looming of the hated picadors. No, this is the elegant lightness of a man as a prancing equestrian against this primordial monstrosity.
He fights in the old way, in the way the kings sported, from the days of King Carlos.
This is a gathering of knowledgeable afficionados, these men from the dregs of cities like Madrid and the harsh plains of Extramadura, and are not put off by the blood or the brutality, but are instead entranced by a ballet of courage and grace in a pas de deux with brute energy.
They come alone or in their twos and threes, hungry and homesick for the sights and the smells of Spain. Thus it always has been and always will be with colonists, those exiles from their home country.
Color and light and sound flood the senses. Mexico has always been a land of harsh sun and primary colors, mostly startling reds and vibrant yellows. The sky is the bluest of pale blues. Sand sparkles as it waits for the blood and the blackest shadows hint of the underworld.
Rhythmic Indian music inspires dancing outside the Plaza de Toros but gives way to liquid trumpet tones, rolling drumbeats and fat German tubas inside. Inspirational music, stirring, even heroic. A rollicking popular tune of the day bounces and echoes around and off the hard concrete, seemingly unmuffled by the myriad bodies. Spanish music, reminiscent of the softer colors of Spain played out here against the harsher backdrop of Mexico.
Cries of the hawkers of wineskins and cacahuates annoy as they dance nimbly along the aisles threading their way through and over feet and ankles.
Some think the bull brutishly stupid when nothing could be further from the truth. Bulls are so intelligent that they can only be challenged once and then must be killed because they learn so fast that they would be too dangerous for any torero.
It is trickery that kills the bull. Misled from the true target by fluttering capes and flags, or by the tantalizing tail of the horse, and then, when he knows better, by the false vitality of a blue and white banner that the Rejoneador trails and the bull chases. The art is in keeping the horse just away from those seeking horns.
It's easy to ridicule the art of the man on the horse. Easy to say that it is the horse that is most in danger and that, as opposed to the matador on foot, the Rejoneador has interposed the horse between himself and the terror. That would be wrong, for as this drama of death plays itself out, it clear that the man and the horse have melded and that the danger to the horse has also become the danger to the man.
Cagancho pranced sideways across the ring under the masterful hand of the Rejoneador, each mincing step precise and sure, while Embajador stood guard over the patch of sand that he had marked out as his own.
That is the wonder of the Rejoneador, the complete marriage of the horse and rider so they become one. So that Cagancho can respond instantly to Juan's bidding. The man the brain, the horse the body. The prancing may seem effete, but instead it is an exhibition, proof to the spectators that they are an entity capable of challenging this throwback to another, more primitive time.
The bull seems a monstrous, implacable, irresistible destroyer. A force of nature that could never be withstood.
But that would be false, for it is the Rejoneador that is the implacable force, that has decreed the time, the place, and the manner of death for the animal. And the bull? He is but a dull and bewildered plaything for the game at hand.
The crowd stamps and whistles at the performance, but is restless, like some enormous living, breathing, sentient thing waiting for the preliminaries to be over and the main event to begin.
The Rejoneador deliberately edges his mount into the zone that the bull has marked for his territory, and so begins the dance. Embajador shifts himself to face the incursion, snuffling, snorting and then pawing the ground, tossing gouts of sand and dust behind him. Juan looses the reins, guiding Cagancho only by the gentle pressure of his knees against the horse's withers as they proudly approach the waiting animal. In his right hand Juan grips the wooden shaft of the rejon, the five foot lance with the six inch, leaf-shaped tempered head.
The bull lowers his head and charges, arrow-straight at the slow-moving man on horseback. A gentle nudge aims Cagancho like a bullet from a gun at the oncoming creature of darkness. In seconds the horse is thundering to meet Embajador. At the last second the horse pulls up short and the man leans over to plunge the blade into the great animal's bunched neck muscle. The crack of the shaft breaking off the blade echoes throughout the stone tiers, leaving the sharpened edges of the iron weapon to saw at flesh and sinew with each movement, and runnels of dark blood course down the heaving black sides, to plop audibly onto the sand and Cagancho spins, taking Juan from harm's way and out of the ring.
Again the trumpet sounds, and it is the second tercio. De Valenciana gallops out of the gate and then stops stock still so that the elegant black, Mazzantini can execute a perfect bow to the delight of the crowd.
Embajador, having returned to his territory after successfully driving off the invader, waits warily for the next attempt, suspiciously eyeing the movements of the man on horseback.




RAGE

Diego De Landa supposed that he should be thankful for small mercies. He was not sent from Izamal under guard, and here he had the freedom of the ship, even if it was a stinking, rat-infested carvel that rolled and corkscrewed like a damned soul.
The Brother was a small, hunched, spare scarecrow figure of a man who wore the hooded, brown, heavy woolen robe of a friar of San Francisco. A black crucifix hung from a simple rope belt and he was shod with sandals. His mien was almost vulture-like, the beak of a nose overhanging his upper lip. He was severely balding, with a straggling fringe that hung down around his ears.
In spite of his appearance, Diego de Landa was anything but a simple friar.
His manner betrayed his true self. His bearing was of one who was used to authority, to being obeyed, but Diego was not a happy man.
He could not fathom their attitude, Bishop Toral and the others. He and Toral had been in conflict from the start. The new Bishop had been imposed on him and De Landa initially refused to submit to his authority until Toral proved that he had been consecrated by the King.
They particularly seemed incensed regarding his burning of those 27 scrolls. Why? How could they possibly object to the burning of the filthy things. In spite of the fact that he could be considered as the foremost Maya linguist of his day, he could not read them, but he knew they were 'works of the devil', designed by the evil one to delude the Indians and to prevent them from accepting Christianity when it should in time be brought to them.
Maybe it was lucky that he never found the legendary 'Golden Books of the Maya'. It was said that they were the true history of the Maya, and were made up of 52 plates of gold strung on a golden bar, and had been hidden to protect them from the Spanish, who would only have melted them down for their content. No matter, because they had never been found, and might still be buried in some forgotten Yucatecan cave.
Diego de Landa was born in 1524, and entered the Franciscan monastery at the age of 17 in 1541. He came to the Yucatan in 1549 and was made Provincial two years later. In 1562, when he went back to Spain, he was 38 years of age. De Landa wrote his Relacion four years later, in 1566.
Toral, defeated by the dominating Franciscan friars, entrenched in their great, Indian-built structures, retired back to Mexico City, where he died in 1571. De Landa returned from Spain in 1573 to succeed his old enemy as the Bishop of the Yucatan some eleven years later, when he would have been 50 years of age. He continued on as bishop until he died in 1579 at the age of 56, still unrepentant and sure that what he had done was right.
There seems little question that De Landa wrote Relacion as part of the defense against the charges that had been brought against him, rather than a work of selfless scholarship. Of particular interest are his Chapters XVII, XVIII, and his Conclusion and Appeal. This is the heart of his defense, and the rest are his observations and his version of some of the history of the Maya.
In Chapter XVII, he took great pains to show the viciousness af the Spanish landowners, who were the chief complainants about his actions because of the effects on the Indian workers. At the same time he made much of the actions of licenciate Tomás López, who had been the Auditor and Judge of the High Court of Guatemala and the Confines. The reason it is interesting is that López had been De Landa's mentor and 'guiding light' in the Provincial's actions in the Yucatan, and he was also one of the seven leading scholars who comprised the committee appointed to judge De Landa.
In Chapter XVIII, the ex-Provincial lists the 'Vices' of the Indians, the conversions, and the punishment of the Apostates. This is the crux of his defense, that severe actions were necessary because of the extreme resistance of the Indians to their conversion.
He begans by listing the vices of the Indians as idolatry, divorce, public orgies, and the buying and selling of slaves. He claimed that because they had been kept from these vices by the friars, the Indians had come to hate the friars, and their priests hated the friars most because they had lost their offices and income.
Of course it was always just possible that the Maya resented the Franciscan process of burning the outlying villages to force the Indians to gather around the monastery fortresses, where they could be converted and controlled. The Franciscan rationale was that the Indians could be more easily instructed and 'not cause the fathers so much trouble'
In furtherance of their policy to convert the Indians, and against serious initial resistance, the friars had collected the small children of the Indian lords and leading men, and established them in houses around the monasteries, while their families visited them and brought them food.
Then the children and many of the visitors were baptized.
Once brought into the fold, the children then informed the friars about idolatries and orgies, and broke up the idols themselves, even those belonging to their own fathers. They urged the divorced women and orphans that were enslaved to appeal to the friars. The newly-baptized children and others were threatened by the people, but stood up for themselves, saying that what was done was for their souls.
The authorities had always supported the friars in their efforts and encouraged the punishment of those who returned to the old life.
Once under the firm control of the Franciscans, the people then were forced to support to the friars, and to build and decorate the churches.
De Landa claimed that the newly-made Christians were then perverted by their priests and chiefs to return to their idolatry. The Indians were led by their priests to make sacrifices by incense and human blood, and it was only in response that the friars held the Inquisition and then an Auto-da-fé. De Landa minimized the actions by saying only that many had been capped with the sambenitos, shorn and beaten, and that some were even placed in penitential robes for a time. He did admit that some, under the influence of the devil, hung themselves, but he said that generally, the people showed much repentance and readiness to be good Christians.
He then inferred that Toral had been misled because he had only listened to the Ecomenderos and the bad Indians.
It was in his Conclusion and Appeal that De Landa showed his true colors.
He asserted that the Spanish had given the Indians justice Christianity and peace. Therefore the Indians owed more to the Spanish and the King more than to their ancestors, the evil parents who begat them in sin and as sons of wrath. De Landa pleaded that Spanish Justice had taken them from their evil by preaching, and that the friars needed to keep the Indians from returning to their evil ways by whatever means necessary, and if it was found that they had reverted, then it was only Christian duty to pull them out by whatever means necessary.
De Landa said that it was up to Spain to glorify God because he had appointed her as the remedy for the ills and evil of so many peoples. He claimed that it was only right that the Spanish perform their Christian duty to save the souls of the heathen.
He complained that there were those who said that the Indians had received aggravations, vexations and bad examples from the Spaniards and that it would have been better if the Spanish had not come. De Landa said they were wrong, because no matter what the Spanish had done, the Indians had done even worse things to each other by killing, enslaving, and sacrificing themselves to demons.
He admitted that there may have even been some bad examples, some bad things that had been done by the friars, maybe even by himslf, but that they had already been remedied by the King or his justices and aside from that, there were always those religious who daily opposed the excesses and so acted as a check. It was then that he put forth the astounding proposition that since Evangelical teaching requires bad examples for comparison with good, that therefore the bad examples were necessary!
In that same spirit he asks pardon for his own defects and wrongdoing, because he is only human, and it is human to err. Then again, if that were not enough, anyway he had already confessed his errors, or provided proof to refute them.
But then again, if this wasn't sufficient, he then refused to defend his actions but freely confessed his faults, and if all else failed, then that alone deserved a pardon!
The Relacion was a tour de force, a denial, an admission, a confession and then an in-your-face assertion that he had been right all along, and that the Indians were only children who needed chastizing to keep them on the straight-and-narrow path to God.
Man has always been a complicated animal. No one is all one thing or another. Scratch a saint and you will find a sinner underneath, striving for sainthood to eradicate his sins. Talk about your idols having feet of clay. That's probably what they mean when they say that no one can be a hero in his own home town. That's because the people in his own home town know ALL there is to know, and not just the hero stuff.
What happened to Diego de Landa? It seems that before his sojourn in Spain he seemed to be one thing, and afterwards, another.
In 1566, he wrote that "If Yucatan were to gain a name and reputation, from the multitude, the grandeur and the beauty of its buildings, as other regions nof the Indies have obtained these by gold, silver and riches, its glory would spread like that of Peru and New Spain."
Okay, so de Landa's Maya alphabet was not major scholarship and was severely flawed. Some have even called it a fraud. No matter. It reveals at least a long-standing interest in the problem of the glyphs. His inquiries into the geneology of the Xius reveal a serious interst, and his observations of the Maya minutiae provide the sole window into pre-columbian everyday life. There was obviously someone there besides the power-mad religious fanatic who was willing to see people tortured and murdered to pursue his own agenda of perceived rectitude.
So what is Diego de Landa all about. Maybe, just maybe, it is about a soupçon of a man.
De Landa was standing by the rail looking out on the vastness of the bowl of spume-mottled gray-green-ness meeting the upside-down powder blue bowl of the sky. The scudding puff-balls of clouds only served to decorate the sky bowl and reflect in the sea bowl.
"So. Going home, Padre."
"What?" Yelped a started Diego de Landa.
"Going home. You're going home. That's all I said, Padre." Said the sailor who had walked up to join the Padre at the rail.
"Oh." Said de Landa.
"You are looking forward to Madrid, Padre?" Persisted the sailor.
"Yes, of course... No, wait a minute, that it not quite the truth. I do not go to Madrid, I go to my Fatherhouse, and I do not go for a happy time."
"..." The sailor was nonplussed, he had come expecting an exchange of pleasantries, and been exposed to a bleeding heart. Well, that was always the possibility, so all the sailor said was, "I'm sorry, Padre."
"No need, my son. It was not anything you have done, nor is it anything you could help."
The sailor touched his forehead in respect where his cap would have been. "Buena Suerte, Padre." Was all he said, as he turned to take his leave.
De Landa was left alone staring out at the sea.








God & Gold

[1]
APOSTLE TO THE INDIES

PROTECTOR OF THE INDIANS

Bartolome de Las Casas was a Saint with feet of clay, but then maybe
all saints have feet of clay - maybe that's what makes them saints.
Born in 1474 near Seville, he was the son of a man who had accompanied
Columbus on his second voyage. Originally educated as a lawyer, he came to
Hispaniola with Velasquez in 1511 and was then ordained as a priest in 1512.
He received an encomienda with an allotment of Indians slaves, but by 1514,
he had become convinced that the forced labor of the Indians was an
unmitigated evil, both to the Indians and to the Spanish.
He surrendered his allotment of slaves, and returned to Spain to try to
change the policies of the Spanish government toward the Indians.
He made himself enough of a nuisance that he was appointed to a
commission on the Indies, but resigned because he was dissatisfied with the
half measures that they were recommending.
In 1521 he was given a grant to attempt to establish a peaceful colony in
Venezuela under Christian principles. While initially successful, the community
failed, and he was forced to seek refuge in a Dominican monastery, an Order
which he joined in 1523. He spent 12 years in Santo Domingo, beginning his
books, History of the Indies, and Apologetic History.
In 1535 he was given a grant to establish a peaceful colony among the
Kekchi Indians in northern Nicaragua and Guatemala, the Peten region. They
had refused Spanish 'pacification', but Fray Bartolome was so successful that
the grant to the Dominicans was extended for another 10 years, and the secular
Spanish were excluded from the area of the grant.
In 1537, the Pope issued a Bull to the effect that the Indians were really
and truly men and capable of receiving the Christian faith. It was now
established that the Indians were people, and not animals without souls or
children incapable of understanding, but also incapable of evil. This was both
good and bad.
By 1540, Fray Bartolome had returned to Spain to write A Very Brief
History of the Destruction of the Indies, finally published in 1552. This
exaggerated account of the cruelty of the Spanish, which De Las Casas felt
was the cause of all the evil in the colonies, was the foundation of the
Black Legend, La Leyenda Negra, which blackened the name of the Spanish
down through the ages, and a picture which, still today, gives the Spanish
people a cruel cast.
Fray Bartolome's continuous and forceful agitation was instrumental in
the passage of the New Laws in 1542, which provided stringent rules and set
forth treatment of the Indians. These New Laws resulted in a vicious conflict
between the landowners and the priests.
After refusing a bishopric in Cuzco, Peru, he was appointed Bishop of
Chiapas in 1544, but his uncompromising attitude soon brought him a plethora
of landowning enemies. Faced with the mounting landowner intransigence to
his implacable defense of the Indians, Bartolome soon became known as the
Apostle of the Indians, but finally resigned after alienating the civil and
economic elite. He returned to Spain in 1547, where, in 1550 and 1551,
Bartolome de las Casas engaged in a series of famous debates with his chief
adversary, Juan Gines de Sepulveda, who held that the Indian cruelties (he had
never visited the Indies) were, in themselves, enough to justify an all-out war
on the Indians.

He died in 1566, but the cruelties to his Indians went on.

It was the summer of 1563 and Spain was blisteringly hot that year. Even
in the old house in Seville that had been borrowed for the meeting.
The old man sat alone in the room, hunched over on his dark oak chair
with the red velvet insets. The chair had a high back, too high for the small,
neat figure of the 90-year-old man. Incongruously, long poles were attached to
the sides of the chair, and two copper-skinned, obviously Indian stalwarts
stood back against a wall like statues.
The room was large and tile floored. Dark oak dining-room furniture was
comfortably arrayed, and the polished surfaces reflected the myriad candles of
the chandelier, lit in spite of the brilliant sunlight streaming in the windows past
the red velvet curtain. The ceiling was high and oak-beamed, while huge
paintings of pastoral landscapes decorated the cream stucco walls.
Old did not describe the man, ancient was better. His face was hawk like
with still-glittering eyes and a prominent beak, and he was mostly balding with
a thin white fringe haloing his head.
The younger man was shown into the room and he entered with a
confident stride. The older man looked up appraisingly and said only, "Senor."
They looked alike, these two. Both small, spare and balding, both
hawk-faced, although it could be said that the younger man looked more like a
vulture than a hawk, but possibly that was only a function of age. The younger
man went over to the older and bowed in respect. "It is my honor, Senor."
The old man stared up at him. "You are the one I have heard so much
about," he said bluntly.
"I am doubly honored that you have heard of me honored Sir."
"You assume that what I have heard is good."
The younger man colored slightly. "Possibly I should introduce myself,
since we have not been formally introduced."
"The old man waved a hand dismissively. "It is not necessary,
Fray De Landa, I am contented to have this opportunity for us to talk, and you
already know who I am."
Diego de Landa was disconcerted by the use of the word 'contented,' but
only replied, "Who does not know of the life and dedication of the famous
Bishop Bartolome de las Casas, the 'Apostle of the Indies'."
Once again the dismissive wave of the hand from Fray Bartolome. He
continued in a serious tone. "Please, Senor. Flowery speeches have no place
between us. I have asked for this meeting to try to understand what a Man of
God was trying to do to my children in the Yucatan. And please pull over one
of the chairs and sit. I do not appreciate having to twist my old neck to stare up
at you. As you can see, my poor old body is folding up on itself."
The young Brother sat back in the chair he had brought from its place at
the table. "I was bringing them closer to God, your Eminence."
"Ah, de Landa, it is times like this that I regret the use of my legs, for I
yearn to stride up and down and yell at your stupidity. As it is, I can only sit
here like the old man that I am and ask you if you have learned nothing from
what I have been saying all of these many years."
Tenting his fingers and then hiding behind them, de Landa cleared his
hroat and began. "Eminence, I have heard what you have to say, but that does
not mean I have to agree with all of it. You call the Indians your children, but
with all respect, they are not yours, but rather God's, and when they fall away,
it is for us, the Men of God to bring them to heel."
"Good God, man! Bring them to heel? What are they then to you? Are
these then dogs, that they must 'heel'?"
"Only a mere figure of speech, Eminence," de Landa exclaimed mildly.
Not dogs, more as lambs that must be brought back to the fold so as to be
protected from the wolves," he shook a finger at the old man, "and you well
know how many wolves are there waiting for our poor lambs."
"Yes, Diego, and I think I am looking at one."
De Landa protested vigorously. "Not so, Eminence. I am a shepherd, not
a wolf. I am the protector against the wolves."
"And were those the wolves that you burned at your Auto-da-fe?"
"Most assuredly, Eminence. The filthy heretics, those apostate, they
would surely have led the flock back to the devil."
"De Landa, De Landa," the Bishop shook his head sadly. I do not
understand you, my son, and I wonder whether it is that you can understand
yourself."
"Eminence?"
"How many did you burn, Diego? How many did you kill? How many
were broken in body and spirit in your zeal?"
"Only those as I had to, Eminence." Brother de Landa sat very straight
and very still... and very stiff in his chair.
"You burned my children, Diego." Fray Bartolome said sadly.
"No, no, Your Eminence. I burned only those who had strayed so far that
they would not come back. We tried Eminence! Really we tried! We burned
only those who refused our help."
"Help, you call it, Diego? Help? Of what help was the rocks put on the
feet? Was it help to fill their bellies with water to bursting and then have some
fat Brother jump on them until they puked blood? Damn you, man, I have read
the complaints to the Council of the Indies. Think you to remain obdurate
before the Council?"
"Pardon, Bishop, but to me it is not obdurate to insist on the right. We did
nothing that God did not want. He spoke through us to the heathen."
The old man fairly roared. "God told you to burn those men? God told
you to torture and kill, to burn villages and destroy the history of a people? Is
that what God told you to do? What God? Surely it wasn't my merciful Jesus
who told you to do these things." He looked at de Landa steadily, staring at him
out of bird-bright eyes, his cheeks flushed with anger. "Tell me, Diego, what
God have you been listening to?"
De Landa was flustered. He was not used to being talked to thus, and he
was at a loss to explain his philosophy and theology to one who had already
made up his mind. Diego spoke placatingly, still respectful of the famous old
man who sat before him. "Eminence, why do you treat me so? We are both
Men of God. It is just that we have chosen different paths."
"Your path is not to God, it is to the Devil, de Landa. The Indians are but
children in the faith, and you would burn them as hoary sinners. Can you not
see the difference. Cannot your God make this plain to you?"
Never a patient man to begin with, Diego de Landa had exhausted his
store of tolerance. "He hunched himself forward in unconscious imitation of
the Bishop. Angry now, he began to tell his truths. "Eminence, I was there, in
the jungle with these. I looked into their eyes. I saw their dreadful works.
Above all we needed obedience without their barbaric questioning. If we had
let it go on, they would all have returned to the old ways and away from our
Jesus! Examples were necessary or they would have torn our hearts from our
living bodies! These children, as you call them, practiced blood sacrifice!
Idolatry! What else could we have done?"
"Calm yourself, Diego. We here must reason together. Think you that
your Indians were different than mine?"
"Maybe, Bishop, maybe. Is it not true that on your first grant, the one in
Venezuela, you were so peaceful and loving that you were forced to hide in a
Dominican monastery to escape from your very charges who would have killed
you?"
"Diego, the memory pains me, yet, there is some truth in it. It was more
than forty years ago, and I was unsure in my faith and in my methods. I would
do it differently today, as I did in my time inn Guatemala among the Kekchi,
only 15 years later. That was not a failure, my son. You should not count the
failures without also counting the successes. I spent some 33 years among my
children. I hope I have learned something in that time. Can you not learn from
me? From my failures and my successes?" The Bishop was almost pleading.
De Landa was unmoved. "Eminence, my own time among the heathen
was short, only a mere 13 years, yet I was never chased to a monastery, and
the seeds that I planted bear fruit even today."
"Ah, but it seems wise for you to gird your loins."
"Eminence, there is little need for fear, Our Lord will decide which way
this thing against me shall go, and there is little that I can do that will make
anyone say 'yea' or 'nay'."
"Can you not show a little humility, my son?"
De Landa laughed, a rude barking noise. "Pardon me, Eminence, but it
amuses me that you should speak to me of humility. You are well known as
possibly the most stiff-necked man in all of Spain and the colonies. You, who
have stood up and battled Kings, Emperors and Popes. You speak to me of
humility?"
"Ah, but I was always on the side of mercy and justice."
"And I. Your Eminence, have always sided with God. I have as much
right to be stiff-necked as you, and damn the nay-sayers."
"Will you pray with me, my son?"
"Pray with you, Eminence? But you say that we are on different paths,
which path shall we pray for?"
"We pray for what a man on a path always needs. Guidance, my son,
guidance.
Laughing as a sign of intelligence
Old, dry skin stretched to the point of creasing over birdlike bones


















CHAPTER HOUSE
But before Relacion was the Chapter House.
De Landa gave the Provincial an abrazo. It was mostly a formality. It had been many years since De Landa had been at the Chapter House on the sun-scorched Spanish plain, and he and the Provincial had not been friends even when they had been acolytes together.
Everyone at the house had been happy to see de Landa leave for Nueva España, and they were less than pleased to see him return. But they had no choice. De Landa had been summoned by the Council of the Indies to answer the charges that had been brought by Bishop Toral, also a Franciscan with ties to the Chapter House. They had all trained there together, and the Provincial knew that Toral still had friends and supporters in the house, whereas de Landa had none.
They could expect the Brothers to be civil but cool to de Landa, but that was not to be helped now. They had their duty, and they would do it. He had always been a zealot, and now it had gotten him into trouble.
It was not that De Landa was friendless in Spain, for he knew that Tomás López was also back from Mexico City and would help.
"Diego! Como estas, mi amigo?" the well-fed Tomás jumped up from his desk as his secretary Luis showed a bedraggled Diego De Landa into his office.
"Bien, bien, Tomás. Y tu?" The abrazo between the two was warm and heartfelt. They had long been compadres and brothers in spirit in the Yucatan.
"I am sorry for all this, Diego. They just do not understand. It is that damned Bartolomé de Las Casas. He did this. He has got all of them thinking that the Indians are people like us. There is no understanding that they are but children who need us to show them the way."
"The Ordinances were necessary, we all knew it. Why couldn't they see it?"
"It was a different time, Diego. That was then. This is now. They would judge you under the rules of the Spain of today, but Spain is not the Yucatan, and what may be good for Spain is not for the Yucatan. And many of these have never been to the Indies. They do not know... and they do not care."
"But all that we did was under the Ordinances of 1552."
"Do I not know, Diego? Was it not I who made those Ordinances when I was judge at the Audiencia?"
"They are saying that you made the Ordinances at our request."
"Well, yes, but who knew better than you. You who were living among the Indians?"
"We needed the power. We would have lost the Indians back to the old ways."
"Yes, yes, we know all that. Diego, we must speak of your defense. To help us I have brought here the good Padre Hernando Velasquez. He is well versed in the lore of our good friend, de Las Casas, and I have brought him here as a kind of abogado del Diablo. Sit, Padre Hernando. Do you have a copy of the Ordinances for us?"
The rotund young Padre placed the document on the table around which they were seated.

The Ordinances of Tomás Lopez
Of the Royal Audience of the Confines, promulgated in 1552
In exercise of the power of our Emperor, vested in me, I command you, the caciques, chief men, and people, as follows:
I. No cacique shall be absent from his town, save for temporal or spiritual good, or as called by the padres, for over 50 days, on pain of loss of office.
II. The Indians must not live off in the forests, but come into the town together, in good strong houses, under pain of whipping or prison.
III. To avoid difficulties in doctrination, no Indian shall change from one town to another without permission of the local Spanish authorities.
IV. Since many of the chiefs and older men, in respect they hold by their ancient descent, call the people into secret meetings to teach their old rites and draw them from the Christian doctrine, in their weakness of understanding, all such actions and meetings are prohibited.
V. The caciques shall not hold gatherings, nor go about at night, after the bells are sounded for the souls in purgatory.
VI. Every cacique or chief of a town shall carry in mind the list of all the people. Every man absenting himself from his town for over 30 or 40 days, save in public service or with the padres, even with the permission of his cacique, shall be punished by 100 blows and 100 days in prison.
VII. Every town, within two years, must have a good church, and one only, to which all may come. Nor may any cacique build any other church than the one, under pain of 100 blows.
VIII. Every town shall have schools where the Indians shall be taught the necessity of baptism, without which no one can enjoy God. The schools shall be built by the town, and the caciques shall compel them thereto, in the form and manner required by the padres, at places designated by them.
IX. On the days for doctrination, one shall go through the towns, bearing a cross and cloth, to call all people together, where all shall gather in order, those of each town by themselves.
X. If any one, having heard the holy word and left his false doctrines, shall return to these, he shall be imprisoned to await the due punishment to be ordered by the Royal Audiencia.
XI. No Indian shall undertake by himself to preach the holy word save by express license of the religious fathers.
XII. No baptised person shall possess idols, sacrifice any animals, draw blood by piercing their ears or noses, nor perform any rite, nor burn incense thereto, or fast in worship of their false idols.
XIII. No Indian baptised, shall return to be baptised a second time.
XIV. Many Indians having been told that their children will die if baptised, I command that all children be brought for baptism.
XV. Matrimony being in great respect among the Indians, I ordain that no one shall have more than one wife, and that an adulterer shall receive 100 blows, and other punishments if he does not amend.
XVI. No cacique shall have to do with a female slave.
XVII. No one shall be so daring as to marry secretly.
XVIII. No one shall marry twice, on penalty of branding with a hot iron in a figure 4 on the forehead.
XIX. No purchase gifts shall be made to the woman's parents, nor shall the youth be required by them, as by their old customs, to remain and serve in their father-in-law's house for two or three years.
XX. No one shall give a heathen name to his children.
XXI. All persons must bend the knee before the sacrament, recite the prayers fixed when the Ave is rung, and reverence the cross and images.
XXII. Every one, man and woman, must go to the church both morning and evening, and say an Ave and a Paternoster with all reverence.
XXIII. At meals all shall say grace before and after, and on retiring at night cross themselves and recite the prayers the fathers will teach them.
XXIV. No one shall cast grains of corn for divination, nor tell dreams, nor wear any marks or ornaments of their heathendom, nor tattoo themselves.
XXV. So lacking in charity and care even for their wives and husbands, or family, are the Indians, that I command all shall care for them when they are sick, etc.
XXVI. Where much sickness comes to a town, it shall be reported, and the fathers shall have those at hand for instruction in holy dying.
XXVII. All inheritances shall be properly cared for.
XXVIII. There shall be no holding in slavery, and all so held shall be set free. But I allow to the caciques, principal men or other powerful Indians to hire people for their service, all of whom shall be reported to the padres and taken to them for doctrination.
XXIX. The custom of banquets to large numbers is so common, and so destructive of Christianity, that I order no general banquets be given by any one save at marriages or like fiestas, but then no more than a dozen people may be invited.
XXX. No dances shall be held except in daytime.
XXXI. God gave us time for work, and time for his service; whereby I order the keeping of all church fiestas, as and in the manner fixed by the religious fathers.
XXXII. All preparation of their ancient drinks is prohibited, and the caciques, principal men, and even the ecomenderos are ordered within two months to gather and burn all utensils or cups used therein, on penalty of 50 pesos fine if they allow more to be made.
XXXII. Towns must be in the Spanish fashion, have guest-houses, one for Spaniards and another for Indians. Also marketplaces to avoid all traveling about to sell or buy. Nor shall any merchant, Indian, Mexican, Mestizo or Negro, be lodged in any private house.
XXXIII. Proper weights and measures shall be provided within two months, on penalty of twenty pesos gold.
XXXIV. I command the raising of cattle to be introduced among the Indians.
XXXV. The chief tribute of the country being cotton mantles, I order that teaching for this be given.
XXXVI. I order that all women wear long skirts and over them their huipiles; and that all men wear shirts and go shod, at least with sandals.
XXXVII. Since the Indians are always wandering the woods to hunt, I order that all bows and arrows are to be burned. But each cacique shall hold two or three dozen bows, with arrows, for special occasions, or necessity against tigers.
XXXVIII. Good roads from town to town shall be kept in order.
XXXIX. No negro, slave or mestizo shall enter any village save with his master, and then stay more than a day and night.

"Hmmm," muttered the young padre as he pored over the document. "Most of this is no problem. The complainants to the Council of the Indies complain only of the torture and death of the Indians. They also say that there was no authority to invoke the Inquisition, and they question the Auto."
Tomás aggressively jabbed with his finger at the sheet of Ordinances. "Look at Numero Diez," he argued. "The wording is clear and specific. If any one, having heard the holy word and left his false doctrines, shall return to these, he shall be imprisoned to await the due punishment to be ordered by the Real Audiencia."
"Perdoname, licenciado, it may be that such allows for the arrest and imprisonment of the denunciado, but there is no provision for punishment by the friars in their towns. Punishment clearly requires that the Audiencia alone has the responsibility."
De Landa became defensive. "Let us, for the moment, leave aside the question of punishment, but the section leaves to the friars the question of culpability. Certainly we were allowed reasonable methods to extract confessions? How else were we to determine the question of who should be held to await the pleasure of the Audiencia?"
"Phaaa!" exclaimed Tomás. "These fools know nothing of how it was with us back then. They say to us that it was only 10 years ago, and how much could things have changed in 20 years? They were not there. It was a different world. A completely different world. It was not until 1545 that the country was sufficiently pacified to allow the arrival of the Franciscans in this country, and in truth, there was no semblance of peace in this land until 1548.
"Ah, but there was peace." argued Padre Hernando. "So what was the reason for this torture and killing of Indians?"
"Torture and killing?" Roared Tomás. "What do you youngsters know of torture and killing. Do you want to talk about torture and killing? Why do you not talk of our brave Conquistadores. Oh, they are heroes, but the good friars who are charged to convert the heathen, they are called barbaric!" His face was engorged with blood and his anger suffused the room."
"Calmate, licenciado, calmate." Responded the young friar, while Diego looked on at this mock battle that seemed more real by the moment. "Why do we speak here of the Conquistadores? What have they to do with the good friar here?"
Tomás had regained control of himself, but he was no less passionate. "Just how do you latecomers think that the Conquistadores pacified this land. Do you think they did it with love and understanding? They were few and the Indians were many. The only way they could take the land and hold it was through fire and the sword. Their tortures and killings were meant to terrorize the Indians. They were not about converting the heathen to Our Lord. They were here for land and riches. They conquered an entire country!"
"But Don Lopez, even admitting your dates, that was still 15 years ago."
"Oh, my boy. 15 years are as nothing. We hold that land by controls of iron. We dare not allow the old ways to regain power because the Indians would have the organization and the will to drive us from the land, as once they drove out Montejo the elder. We hold the land in the palm of a strong right hand, and if we should falter for even one minute, we would be swept from the Yucatan as seeds upon the wind."
The young padre brightened and said, “A moment, senores, I have forgotten. The Council also charges the burning of the villages. What say you?
It was De Landa who spoke up. “These fools question the burning of the villages, do they? And just how did they think that we could have gotten the Indians to gather around the monasteries?
He leaned over the table and pointed at the document again. “Here, look at this:
II. The Indians must not live off in the forests, but come into the town together, in good strong houses, under pain of whipping or prison.
III. To avoid difficulties in doctrination, no Indian shall change from one town to another without permission of the local Spanish authorities.
“Just how were we to enforce such orders? Of course we burned the villages. If we had not, the stupid Indians would only have returned to them, like foxes to their den. It was to follow the Ordinances that we burned the villages. And the other Ordinances, for how were we to see whether there was obedience if we did not bring them close to us?”
Padre Hernando Velasquez ruminated for a moment and then responded, “Yes, that should suffice. But let us move on to the question of the usurpation of the mantle of the Inquisition and the instituting of the Auto-da-fe. How is it that all this can be justified?”
Again it was De Landa who spoke, and he spoke calmly and with great authority, as if the subject had long been on his mind, as indeed it had. “Padre, you overreach yourself. There was no ‘usurpation’, as you call it. There was no bishop who was available to us for the exercise of ecclesiastical duties, and so we took unto ourselves the plenary authority, the autoridad omnimoda, to exercise those duties in distant places, as has always been the custom.’
‘And have we forgotten that it was the Judge of the Audiencia himself, the good Licenciado Lopez, who gave us the Ordinances, and who also gave us a decree allowing the friars to act in the place of the bishop, so as to enforce the Bulls, even to have the aid of public officials in punishing cases. We were given the ‘keys of Peter’, and as such, we acted to protect the faith. Is that not true, Tomas?”
The plump licenciado laced his fingers over his paunch and proclaimed, pontifically, “All is as you say, Diego.”
Drawing a sheet of parchment from his leather folder, De Landa laid it on the table for the others to read, and continued, “Not only that, but what of the Papal Bull of 1537, which clearly set forth that:
under pain of excommunication by sentence carried, latae sententiae, no apostate shall presume to go to the Indies, so that the Indians be not infected and perverted by bad examples. The bishops shall see to it that all such apostates are expelled from their dioceses, that they may not deprave and deceive souls tender in the faith. What of that, my good Padre?
“Wait a moment, good Brother. That Bull was sent forth for the protection of the Indians, while you would use it for prosecution. It was meant as a shield, not a sword. Then too there is the principal that the Indians were not subject to the Inquisition being ‘infants in the faith’, just as children. What you quote as justification is the very thing that has brought you to Spain to appear before the Council!”
De Landa sat back in his chair, the leather creaking at his movement. “Yes, yes, padre, I understand all that, but can they ignore the words? Were these heretics not apostates under the Bull? Were they not depraving and deceiving souls tender in the faith? We were enjoined to root them out, excommunicate them, relax them over to the civil authority for carrying out of the sentence of death? If that was our authority, then whatever we did that was lesser, was that not also authorized?”
The young padre grunted in exasperation. “Brother, you should have been a Canon Lawyer, for your arguments do truly question the number of angels who may dance on the head of a pin.”
“This is my life, Padre Velasquez, and it is on this and my labors for the faith, on which I stand.”
“But wait,” started Velasquez. What of the proclamation, signed by the Bishops of Mexico, as well as all the Orders...” At this he glanced pointedly at De Landa. “... that expressly ordered that in acting under plenary authority, the friars could not use whipping and flogging to enforce obedience to the church, or, in matters of faith. What of that, good Brother?”
De Landa shrugged. What can be taken away by the church, can later be given again. That conference was superseded by the 1552 Ordinances of the Audiencia, as will be attested to by Tomas Lopez, who promulgated those Ordinances, together with provisions for punishment. Tomas, is that not true?”
The licenciado looked a little uncomfortable, but replied, “It is as you say, Diego. Such was necessary for the preservation of the faith, for without the faith, what was there to hold us in Nueva Espana?”
Diego de Landa turned to Velasquez to say, “ Is there not a sufficiency for what we have done in the matters of faith. Surely, while it can be said that we were zealous in our efforts, it cannot be said that we acted without proper authority, for it was the Audiencia itself which gave us that authority. Surely, the present pacific state of the Yucatan gives adequate testimony that what we have done is necessary.
Padre Hernando Velasquez had fallen silent and ruminative. He was thinking that it was likely more due to the quick and judicious alleviations of Bishop Toral which contributed more to the fragile peace in the Yucatan, than to the methods of De Landa, but the padre kept himself to himself. He had decided to allow De Landa to make such presentations to the Council. It was Lopez who allowed that if there were no other matters which might be attended to, that the padre was excused with thanks.




XII
BOOK THE TWELFTH
CAST ADRIFT
IN WHICH I ESCAPE FROM TENOCHTITLAN & traverse the country they called Mexico and finally returned to my own village of Itzamal in the Land of the Deer, the place you call Yucatan












CAST ADRIFT

It has been said that history is a compromise of lies, agreed upon by the victors, and so it is with the history of the conquest of Mexico, which often seems to border on the miraculous. All you know comes from your Castilianos or those who toadied to the Castilianos. You do not know of the Mexica side of the story, though much of what you are told often defies logic and belief.
What I have written here is our history of our suffering land, not your history of your wondrous, fantastical, and even mythical accomplishments. It is true that much of what I write I was not present at, but those who told me of the events, whether they be Mexica or even Spanish, were there at the time and saw and heard all. It is from them that I have learned of what I tell, and I present it as our truth, and not your truth.
I knew what it meant the very moment I heard about the death of Cuatemoc, maybe I even expected it, for there had been rumors of a rift between them. It mattered not. The same time I heard of what happened was the day that I fled from the Mexico City of the Castilianos. I took very little with me, only enough for my four porters and no carrying litter. I knew what it was to walk long distances, and I was not afraid.
I took many of the gold disks that the Spanish called doubloons and counted them valuable, but I also took the money of the Azteca; cacao beans, multi-colored bird feathers, turquoise, and quills of fine gold dust. I also freely admit that I took a long dagger of fine Toledo steel and a brace of two dueling matchlock pistols, cunningly engraved and chased in gold. I wanted very much to take one of the long matchlocks, and a falconet would likely have been useful, but alas, this was not to be a military expedition with many Indian auxiliaries.
I also had a ‘safe conduct’ pass that had been given to me for my work with the Collectors, and ‘Captain-General’ Cortes, as he now styled himself, had signed it.
Just a word about my use of their word ‘Indian.’ This is a word that comes from the Castilianos, and is taken from Cristoforo Colombo, who first thought that he had reached the ‘Indies,’ and so he called the inhabitants ‘Indians,’ which is still used today, though it has long been proved wrong. So, even I use the word in spite of the fact that I know it is ridiculous. It would be better to use the term ‘Mexican,’ even though I know that is not always correct, for I could be called a ‘Mexican’ even though I am not of the Mexica and come from the Yucatan, and am of the Quiche Maya.
My porters and I turned eastward, toward Oaxaca, and traveled along different paths from the roads of the ordinary traveler, keeping away from the larger towns, so as to stay clear of any Spanish troops or Collectors that might be about.
The Captain-General was far from Mexico City, and his absence was felt everywhere within the length and breadth of Mexico. Who knows why Cortes chose that time to go on that foolhardy march to Honduras?
Some say that it was only his innate sense of adventure that propelled him on another exploit, but there are others who have a darker view. It is said that even before he gathered up the small force and precipitously left in 1524, his rule was falling apart. He had been the sole governing power in Nueva España, but there were numerous challenges to his rule and his granting of entitlements to his gang of men who were naught but the sweepings of the streets of Madrid and Toledo.
They were not men who govern, they were men who fought with swords, fists, and guns, but were strangely unarmed in the face of a battle of words, documents, and laws. In the arena of the courtroom, they stood naked and helpless.
For many of them, these adventurers had no need of plantations in Mexico that required work and management, and these were not managers. They longed for the bars and whores of Madrid, and were quick to sell their winnings cheaply to the lawyers and the agents that descended upon the land like a gang of locusts.
Watching his Conquest be nibbled away was more than Cortes could stand, so he did what he did best, mounted another expedition in a desperate attempt to gain another empire for Spain, and so still the rising tide of his detractors. To put it another way, he ran away, leaving his enormous achievement in the hands of lesser men. Three years of governance after the fall of Tenochtitlan was enough for Cortes.
Consigning his rule to functionaries was soon to bear bitter fruit. Almost immediately, false rumors of a revolution nearly forced Cortes to turn around. Upon emergence of rumors of the destruction of Cortes’ expedition, his representatives usurped his mantle, caused a great funereal memorial to the Captain-General, and then proceeded to commandeer the lands of all who had gone on the expedition with Cortes, and the thieves spread their tendrils throughout the entire area of the Conquest. Nueva España was in the throes of what amounted to a civil war between the supporters of Cortes, and the representatives of his old enemy, Velasquez, the Governor of Cuba.
Only the opposition of the ‘old’ conquerors and the possible return of Cortes threatened this rapacious takeover.
Meanwhile, upset by the reports he had been receiving, he started back for the capital, but the fortunes of Cortes seemed to have turned, and though he attempted several times to return by sea, the attempts only ended in shipwreck.
It took him many tries to return to Mexico City, and by that time it was practically necessary for him to retake it, not from the Mexicans this time, but rather from the bureaucrats which were in the process of stealing it from him.
As it always was with the Castilianos, it had to do with the gold. As great a warrior that Cortes was, he was a weakling when matched against the legions of bureaucrats that his enemies and his country sent against him in torrents. There is little question that the Conquistadores treated any territory they came across as theirs, and no Indian tribe or Mexican individual could assert any claim against them. In their view, they owned us, all of us, and our land, every square hectare of it.
He had apportioned great swaths of our land to his followers, to do with as they wished, the land and everyone on it, but when the Captain-General finally came back from Honduras, he himself seemed to have changed, his fire had gone out. The ‘mice’ were all arrayed against him, eating away at his achievements and his reputation, and he seemed almost powerless against them.
Upon arriving back at the capital, he had been greeted with a tumultuous reception. He had been gone two long years, and his return was as a return from the dead. Although he instituted proceedings against his enemies and detractors, he soon discovered that he had been superseded in the government of Nueva España by a series of Viceroys appointed by the Court in Madrid. Jealous and suspicious of the allegations of missing royal percentages of the enormous riches that had been taken, and of stealing and hiding the riches of Motecazoma, along with charges that he was making false reports of the provinces he had conquered. The Crown had finally acted when Cortes was accused of having distributed power and vast tracts of land to his supporters in order to establish a new country independent from Spain.
The Emperor appointed a Commissioner with full powers to investigate the matter. In the meantime, mini-wars and disputes erupted over the ownership of plantations and their inhabitants who were increasingly being treated as slaves.
Meantime, the rumors and charges mounted. More and more, Cortes’ recommendations and orders were disregarded, and his friends and appointees, routed out and destroyed or punished. When Cortes protested the treatment, he was peremptorily commanded to leave the capital, and he retired to a place outside the city. The upstart political appointees had displaced the conqueror of millions.
A series of Commissioners had shown themselves to be incompetent and inadequate, and the Spanish Crown, frantic in their greed, finally appointed a new Commission to administer the whole country. Titled the Royal Audience of New Spain but simply called the Audiencia, this august body set about to judge Cortes. The ‘mice’ were to judge Cortes, but he would have none of it, especially not in City that he alone had taken.
He decided to exonerate himself in Spain, taking with him a large collection of the products and peoples of Nueva España. Presenting himself at the Royal Court in Toledo, he was feted at the head of a great procession, and quickly ingratiated himself with King Charles who repeatedly showed the confidence he now reposed in Cortes, who was raised to title of Marquess del Valle de Oaxaca.
He was given an enormous estate in the province of Oaxaca, as well as veritable palaces in the city of Mexico as well as in other places. His estates encompassed more than twenty large towns and villages, as well as twenty-three thousand subjects. But he was not reinstated in the government of Mexico. That part of his service was finished, and had been given over to the successors.
However he was reinstated in his military command as Captain-General of New Spain, and encouraged to explore further on behalf of the sovereign. In 1529 he remarried, and in 1530 returned to Nueva España.
There, he found himself the subject of a proceeding by the Audiencia, which was in full control of the country. Charged by his avowed enemies with everything from Treason to the Crown to the murder of his first wife, the furor of the investigations broke against the rocks of Royal approval of Cortes the man, and led nowhere. It had taken only eleven years to go from the landing on the shores of Mexico, to the passing of power to the bureaucrats. With the passing of the power, Cortes too, passed from the scene.
Cortes faced and was overthrown by two enemies, the men of Velasquez and the bureaucrats from Spain, but the personification was NuÔo de Guzman, President of the Audiencia, a Spaniard absolutely obsessed with a hatred of Cortes and the Conquistadores, and who now led the tyranny of Nueva España, with the support and backing of the Spanish Crown.
While it is difficult for me, a simple Mexica, to understand how this had come to pass, it seems as if Spain decided that it needed to break the hold Cortes had on Nueva España, so as to loot it more efficiently.
Such was the reason for the reign of terror that descended upon us, and led to small wars between the factions of Castilianos that raged back and forth over the prostrate body of our poor Mexico. Guzman set out to destroy Cortes and his Conquistadores, and in the process built a huge slave trade to work the mines. Backed by the complacent courts of the Audiencia, he used trumped-up charges to seize the goods, positions, ecomiendas and Indios of the ‘old’ Conquistadores and distribute it all to his friends and supporters.
The ecomiendas were the legalized means of distributing ownership of Mexican land to the Conquistadores. They were supposedly given grants of land as a trusteeship, by which the ecomienderos were given the right to collect tribute through work from the Indians, while devoting themselves to the protection and indoctrination of the Indios in the Christian religion. These well-intentioned ecomiendas immediately became vast plantations, and the owners absolute dictators within their boundaries.
To accomplish Guzman’s purposes, his Audiencia’s reign of terror wielded confiscation, imprisonment and even the gallows, and imposed a rigid censorship at their great port of Vera Cruz to keep word of their horrors from reaching Spain.
This rigid control and suppression, imposed by cynical exercise of the law, resulted in animosity and strife, enslavement of the Indians, and the wholesale oppression of Indios and Spaniards alike.
Into this morass stepped a Franciscan Friar, Juan de Zumarraga, Archbishop of Mexico and entitled ‘protector of the Indians,’ a title that had resulted from the barbarous treatment of the Indians in Cuba and the surrounding island chain of the Antilles. There, virtually the entire Indian population had been destroyed in one generation, and the same result was well under way in Mexico.
It is true that Zumarraga was a zealot in destroying any relics of our gods, and was a fervent and even fanatical Christianizer of the Indians, but it is also true that he was as fervent and fanatical in the protection of our bodies.
If we have anyone to thank for their actions on behalf of the Indians, it is Friars such as Zumarraga and the Dominican, Bartolome de Las Casas, but against whom did these Spaniards make their great efforts? Other Spaniards. It would have been better if they had all stayed home.
Incensed and morally outraged, Zumarraga set up an independent court to hear Indian complaints, while the Audiencia told him to mind his own business. The feud escalated until a group of Indians came to the Archbishop’s court with a claim that Guzman was exacting such heavy tribute that they were forced to sell their women and children into slavery to pay it.
This led to open war between Guzman and Zumarraga. I am only a poor Indio and know little of the affairs of great men, but it does seem as if these Spaniards were always fighting each other while we were caught in the middle, oppressed by both sides.
Events escalated to such a point that Zumarraga was forced to smuggle a petition past Guzman’s guards at Vera Cruz, a petition to the Council of the Indies which exposed Guzman and the Audiencia and led to a total change in the government of Nueva España, now to be ruled by a Viceroy, a personal representative of the Spanish king. It was the year 1530 and nine years had passed since the fall of Tenochtitlan.
So the Spaniards fought, and still we died of their plagues and their brutality, and we were enslaved and abused as these foreigners struggled like curs fighting over scraps.
The goal of my escape from Mexico City was my own little village of Itzama in the Land of the Deer, the place that you now call the Yucatan. It had been many years since I had traveled through the backcountry of Cemanahuac, but many things had changed. I knew that the plagues of the Spaniards had swept the length and breadth of our country, but I had not considered what it might mean.
In our travels, my porters and I passed through many villages and towns that, though still intact, were totally deserted, except that there were often skulls and bones scattered about the central square, where the bodies had been dragged and eaten by the pigs, the dogs, or the wild animals.
There were many places for us to stay, for the chozas (huts) of the inhabitants were still there and empty, except for the small wild animals that had made their homes there and were easily dispossessed. We swept the houses where we would stay, and burned copal incense in God Pots within the quarters to appease the spirits that might be there.
The God Pots were pottery censers with the faces of various of our gods that had always been used to burn the copal incense, although often the God Pots had been blessed by blood that came from the bodies of the priests, as they had mutilated themselves with maguey thorns. This was one ritual that I could not participate in, for if the Spaniards took me, they would quickly decide that I was a priest, and put me to death as an abomination.
All the chozas were open, although some had suffered from the weather. Some of them had rush roofs that had fallen in, and many had been ransacked by animals, but most were still whole, and could easily be made warm and welcoming.
The porters at first feared that the sickness of the gods might still dwell within the villages, but summers had passed and it was my thinking that the sickness had passed to those it could more easily kill.
So we stayed in these terrible villages as we journeyed eastwards, making use of their shelter and their water, and we lacked for nothing, for even clothes and cooking things had been left behind when the wild animals had eaten their owners.
As we passed from village to village, we began to feel obligated to the spirits of the lost inhabitants. At first we only gathered together the bones and swept the square, but as time went on, we developed a ritual.
We first located the God House within the village, and then we gathered together the skulls that had been strewn around, and carefully built them into a small pyramid on the altar of the God House, burning copal incense in God Pots that were placed before the altar. According to custom, we always tried to find the traditional green stones to place in the mouth of the skull, so that the spirit could have a charm to throw at the demons on the road to Mictlan, the afterlife. We sometimes had a problem in that often the upper and lower jaws were separated and could be matched only by a guess. We did the best we could in hopes that someone would do the same for us.
Thus propitiated, our gods and the spirits of the villagers allowed us to sleep in peace, although we were later to discover that the Spanish were to find these homages and decide that there was a renewed worship of the old gods.
It took months to cross the countryside to the Yucatan. One of my porters had died, bitten by a twenty-minute snake, but there was less to carry as we went along.
We finally came to my village of Itzamal, and although I still had hopes, that village too was deserted. I loved my village there on the edge of the brilliant turquoise sea, the sun glinting from the tops of the ripples as the waves rolled in to gently lap up onto the sand of the beach. Our village was not imposing, and had only eight houses on the edge of an abnormally large cleared square, that we laughingly called our zocalo, with our God House in the center.
There were the usual skulls and bones scattered about, and if my people were there among them, there was no way that I could tell which ones they were. We built our usual pyramid of skulls in the God House of our village. The God house was usually small, just four poles, one on each corner, with a rush roof overhead that was missing several branches, letting in stabs of sunlight.
Not so the God House in our village. It was almost four times the usual size, set in the middle of the huge central plaza, and on one side of the zocalo, up against a low hill, there sat one-half of a small, but imposing green stone pyramid, cut longitudinally so that only the front half was visible, topped with a small rush-roofed altar, now looking bedraggled and forlorn. We set the God Pots with burning copal before the altar in the God House and then sat on the sand awhile, just staring at the empty eye sockets of the skulls staring back at us, and we wondered whom the skulls belonged to.
Our zocalo was larger than it should have been because we were a regional sacred site because of what the strange, half-pyramid fronted, or might be concealing. The small hill concealed a natural cave that had been artificially enlarged. In our culture, caves were looked upon as entryways through the living earth into an underworld of gods and ancestors. They also represented Chicomoztoc, the seven mythical caverns from which the Chichimec ancestors were believed to have first emerged.
They were a place for our most sacred ceremonies and all larger sites, and often even family homes, had either natural or man-made caves, or the large open limestone water pits that we called cenotes. Our sacred site was entered through a concealed trap door in the top of the pyramid, and from there, a steep stone stairway led down to the original cave.
From that cramped space, our ancestors had dug a 50-foot long diagonal tunnel leading down to a large, open area with a small plaster-lined basin to hold the sparkling water that came from a small opening in the tunnel’s side to create an artificial waterfall. Along the sides of the tunnel and the open area were lined with separate chambers big enough to crawl into, so that together there were seven caves, and many wall niches containing god-images, pottery and relics.
In that total darkness, somehow the builders had worked in stones of an eerie blue-green luminescence that cast a glow over the room where the pool sparked with splashing intensity.
Caves and water. We all believed that water was the source of life, and that the underworld was the source of water. Caves with water were seen as the ‘generative womb of the Earth,’ that gave birth to humanity. We called them ‘creation caves.’
I alone descended into that sacred space, where I had never been, but I saw something there I did not expect to see. There were twenty-two carefully sealed large pottery vessels, large as funereal jars, but I knew that ancestors had never been buried in our caves.
I could not see what was in the jars, and I do not know for sure, but from many conversations I have had with priests of the old gods, in hiding from the Spanish, I believe that our codices, our sacred books had been hidden from our enemies, never to see the light of day again until the hated Spanish were gone from our lands.
We stayed there for days, waiting for I knew not what, but disappointed nevertheless. My village had been stripped of anything valuable, and all that had been meaningful to me had gone. I no longer had a home in Tenochtitlan. I no longer had a home in Itzamal. I no longer had a home anywhere. 3855 WORDS


XV
BOOK THE FIFTEENTH
THE BISHOP OF MERIDA
Being the tale of diego de landa, PROVINCIAL OF IZAMAL & BISHOP OF MERIDA


















THE BISHOP OF MERIDA

As I write this testimony, it is the Year of Our Lord Fifteen Hundred and Seventy-Nine, and I am now over 83 years of age and I have had a long life full of adventures. I had never expected to live this long, and sometimes I take it as a curse rather than a blessing. Maybe I was meant to tell this tale. I have met many of my people and many of yours, and have come to know them. I am sure that you learned gentlemen no doubt know more of the revered Bishop Diego de Landa than I will ever know, but for me to tell my story, you must see him as we saw him, through our eyes. Now that he is dead, most of the ones of whom I speak have passed on to whatever gods may be willing to accept them. They can no longer be hurt, and at my time of life, neither can I.
The first time I saw him it was in the year 1551, Padre Fray Diego de Landa was short, spare, and balding with a tonsure that was well familiar to his order. His brown hopsack robe with the hanging cowl was gathered at the waist and encircled by a chain of black beads from which hung a large black wooden cross. He was not young, and had reached his middle years as a fiercely devout Brother of the Franciscans.
Nor was he a handsome man, and bore a dour, pinched, tight-lipped, drawn aesthetic visage and a piercing gaze that struck deep into a sinner's heart, although he saw few sinners until his later life, when he saw too many.
Born in 1524 in Cinfuentes, a small town in the Alcaria, to the Northeast of Madrid. At the age of sixteen, he entered the Franciscan monastery of San Juan de Los Reyes in Toledo.
In the summer of 1549 at 25 years of age, de Landa came to the Yucatan and the fledgling Franciscan monastery at Izamal, together with six or seven other friars led by Nicolas de Albalate. An expert linguist, he simplified and improved an original grammar of the Yucatec Maya.
By 1551, at the age of 27, he was recalled to Merida, and then assigned to a convent at Conkal in the province of Ceh Pech. By 1556 he was again in residence at Izamal. On November 13 of that year, he was elected Custodian of the first chapter of the newly formed province of Yucatan and Guatemala. He remained in that office until September of 1561, when, at the age of 37 he was chosen to become its first Provincial.
In 1562, de Landa began the first in a series of rigorous investigations into the secret idolatrous religious practices of the Maya. He considered that the readiness with which the Maya had embraced the new religion amounted to little more than adding the Christian God to the already-existing pantheon.
A large number of Indians, including many of their leaders, were put to the question under torture, and many confessed to having idols, or performing idolatrous rites. The leaders were then forced into public confessions and punishments. This is when I first met the man, when he found me there among The People in the small village where I had gone to earth.
These tactics caused unrest among the Indians with a subsequent diminution of productivity that quickly produced severe consequences among the Ecomenderos, the landowners whose interests were being damaged.
The Ecomenderos appealed to the newly appointed Bishop Francisco de Toral and an enmity developed which resulted in de Landa being recalled to Spain in 1563, eventually to successfully defend his actions. When Toral died in 1571, de Landa was appointed his successor as Bishop of Merida, a position he maintained until his death in 1579.
For his 36 years he had been within the peace that was the Franciscan Order. It began with the monastery at De Ribera, first as an orphan child brought to the door in the dead of night, the unwanted and inconvenient bastard child of a great Spanish house, then as a student novitiate, and finally as a clever and obedient Brother, well schooled in the temporal and religious requirements of monastic life.
He knew nothing of women and little of men, although of politics he was a master, schooled in the art within the arcane world of the Spanish Religious. Brothers of the Franciscans were taught the social graces, made socially acceptable and then introduced to the world of Spanish aristocracy where they charmed and manipulated their way into kinship with the hierarchy.
But not de Landa. He was deemed too blunt and cutting for polite society, but his tough, almost militaristic bearing and knife-edged tongue were deemed duly suited to the requirements of the men of the streets and cantinas that were sent as Conquistadores to the New Colonies. De Landa did not know it, but it was his enemies, and they were legion even within the closed confines of the monastery, who had heartily recommended him for the journey.
In 1546, a disease that was either pneumonic plague, influenza or both, scourged the land, and it was said that "Five-sixths of the Indians died." In the next epidemic sweep, in 1576, approximately two millions died. The specter of death rode high over our sun-drenched land for centuries.

IZAMAL
Franciscan Brother Diego de Landa was both a naive and a zealous believer in an afterlife and a forgiving Christian God, but he believed God to be forgiving only to Christians.
Brother de Landa was sent as a spiritual and moral watchdog, and his mere presence pretty well accomplished that purpose. Once there he became an awestruck tourist who became more and more horror-stricken, the more he realized the depth of what he considered to be the perfidy of the converts.
He didn't differentiate between the relatively benign religious practices of the Itzaes, as against the human sacrifices of the Toltecs and the Aztecs. To his mind the smallest clay idol was equivalent to the heathen temple, and all consigned The People to the fires of hell.
The horror was writ large in his book, Relacion de Las Cosas de Yucatan, The Story of the Things of Yucatan, which may well have been prepared by him for his defense of his actions in the Yucatan, to prove that the Indians were indeed idolators.
This was doubly offensive to him because the Indians claimed to have heard from their ancestors that their land had been settled by people from the East whom god had liberated by cutting twelve paths for them through the sea. He had reached the conclusion that they were the descendants of the Lost Twelve Tribes of the Jews.
He wrote with feeling that the devil carries idolaters away to hell with a fatal misery and an intolerable burden, a great cruelty that God permits because The People refused to rule themselves by the light of the reason that he had given them.
De Landa thought that by being harsh he was saving their souls. He really believed that he was acting on their behalf. His opinion was that God was letting the Indians be tormented in this life and to get a preview of the hell they deserved, because they were working so hard for the devil and suffering terribly themselves, and offering up the lives of their brothers and their neighbors.
De Landa said that along with their earthly torments, the devil would still carry them down to hell where he would torment them eternally.
He gave thanks that God would be satisfied with less, and he pushed hard for the Indians' piety for their eternal, as well as their temporal benefit.
He was more than horrified by the memories of the Maya Priests, their stinking black robes covered in old, dried blood and their matted and stringy hair clotted with the filthy stuff. He saw their fashionably crossed eyes burning with the fire of their perfervid fanaticism. He knew of the blood-covered temples at the top of the pyramids. He had seen their Chacmools black from bloody accumulations.
What he didn't realize was that no matter the horrors visited upon their people by their own Mexican Priests, they were as amateurs compared to what the Spanish and the Spanish 'Messengers of God' brought. It was said that Cortes was personally responsible for the death of a quarter-of-a-million people in the land that we now call Mexico.
The Monastery San Antonio at Izamal sat midway between Chichen Itza and Valladolid amidst the vast fields planted with maize. Established in eleven buildings, now linked together in a quadrangle monastery-fortress, it had been built on the foundations of an ancient Maya temple, it used blocks taken from a nearby pyramid.
The Indian workmen under the directions of the Franciscan Brothers had added the great adobe walls and a cloister with a darkened, arched, red tile floored colonnade.
The monastery was built around a central open grass court with flagstone walkways and small, sparkling fountains. A green island of peace and relative cool on the blazing plain.
The cell of Custodian de Landa was no more than the cell of any other of the Brothers. Cool, plastered, whitewashed walls. A creaking bed of rough posts and rope with a ticking mattress filled with fronds. A hopsack bed covering rarely needed in the soft nights. Eight feet by six feet with a tamped earth floor and an oak plank door with leather hinges. There was a small stool beside the bed, a stand for a single candle in a pewter holder.
A crude giant black stick crucifix on which hung a white suffering Jesus theatrically dominated the starkness of the chamber. Below it hung a plaited leather lash, tiny lead balls attached to the end of each straggling thong. Something dark had dripped and splashed on the dirt floor.
The chinks in the warped plank door admitted spears and knives of light to splash against the chalky interior in a chiaroscuro riot to dapple the naked figure of Diego de Landa as he tossed on the bed. He watched, struggling against the succubus that was squeezing his very being like an anaconda.
He longed... no, that wasn't strong enough, every fiber of his being demanded that his hands touch himself and strive toward relief... yet still he strained against this compulsion. It was almost beyond his control -- almost.
His feverishly staring sweat-rimmed eyes stared at... devoured the young Indian boy working over the sparse flowers in the courtyard, the sweat running down the muscles moving over his bare olive back, shining in the sun. Diego's back was still oozing blood from the self-inflicted stripes as the Brother tried to whip himself free of the demons that infested his soul.
Spirit-ridden, de Landa threw himself from his rope bed, shrugged into his robe, then scuffed on his simple strapped sandals, dragging them against the tamped floor. Wildly, he smashed up the wrought-iron door latch and the door sagged on its pig greased-leather hinges. He ripped open the door, the bottom corner dragging across the grit of the floor, leaving a line to be crossed.
De Landa crossed it. He crossed it angrily and he crossed it purposely. He stepped high in spite of his sandals as he came up onto the flagstones of the cloister, heading toward the dread chamber.
He was the Provincial of Izamal and he had arrogated to himself, without proper authority, if the truth be known, the terrible power and fear that was embodied in the Inquisition. Actually known as the Society for the Propagation of the Faith and originally narrowcast, it had broadened its net to become a widespread instrument of used and misused religious terror.
The fervent little Priest with the glowing eyes burst into the forbidding stone-lined chamber, the sweat on the walls gleaming in the light of the wall torches. There the panel of three Brothers sat ensconced in huge chairs of dark wood as if on thrones. The three were on the raised platform as they confronted a single older Indian who sat hunched over on a stained, three legged stool, bare to the waist, the purpling stripes of his recent scourging like wagon ruts on a logging road.
"Brother Olvieda!" De Landa screamed, startling the lead interrogator, who jumped back, knocking over his chair.
"M...My Lord?" Queried the man.
"This one!" Shouted de Landa, pointing to the cowering Indian. "What is his offense?"
"As always, Lord. He is an idol worshipper."
"Has he been baptized?"
"By you, yourself, Lord."
De Landa still seethed. "Then he is a backslider and a heretic!" His voice was rising in inflection and increasing in timbre. "Why does he still live?" The Priest wailed.
The Brother was distressed and his darting eyes betrayed his discomfort. "My Lord? He is aged, My Lord."
"That only means that he is closer to God, and you are denying him the State of Grace. Has he confessed?"
"We were questioning him, Lord." Said the Brother, attempting to cloth himself in his shredded dignity.
"You are questioning him," slurred de Landa derisively. "Then if you are questioning him, why is he not strung up on the wall with the whip making love to his back? That is the way to put the question!"
The Brother had his head bowed and said nothing. Obviously silent in contrition.
"Well, Brother Olvieda, what are you waiting for? You now know what to do, DO IT!" De Landa roared the last, almost blasting the contrite Brother off his dais. The man frantically signaled to the two stalwarts standing back against the wall, who rushed forward to drag the unresisting old Indian back to the wall, where he was duly chained with his arms stretched and his back exposed.
Once the man was strung up, de Landa strode to a position behind the man and brought his own lead-shot studded whip from his robe, yelling at the two trussing up their little prisoner to stand back, and then de Landa began, his speech a staccato counterpoint to the crack of the lash, and the slithering of the thongs through the blood and shards of flesh.
"Heathen!"
Crack -- ssssst
"False Christian!"
Crack -- ssssst
"Confess!"
Crack -- ssssst
"Confess your sins, dog!"
Crack -- ssssst
"You are...”
Crack -- ssssst
"...Dying, heathen!"
Crack -- ssssst
"Confess before you die!"
Crack -- ssssst
"Go before..."
Crack -- ssssst
"...Your God..."
Crack -- ssssst
"Shriven!"
And on and on he went, the blood, sweat and saliva spraying and mingling as he worked to relieve the tension that drove him to the murderous rages that came upon him more and more often, to the consternation of the Brothers.
It was in 1551, in the closing months of the latest visitation of the pox, that Izamal and the province were afflicted with a terrible shortage of workers. The response of the Brothers was to go on expeditions through the neighboring villages in search of Indians. Their goal was to bring back converts to Izamal to swell the ranks of Mission workers.
De Landa was not the first and he was not the last in the line of march. He and his Franciscan Brothers were at the center. Most of the column was composed of Indians who were terrified of the White man's sickness. The only thing that kept them going and stopped them from running away was the lying assurance of the Priests that they would extend the White God's protection to them.
Once again they had gone out to the villages to find natives to bring back to the Mission and baptize. More souls for the Lord. They didn't expect much success. There weren't many natives left alive to find. Most of the villages they came across were empty of living things. They could go for days without seeing a single live human soul, while the sight of half-eaten bodies became familiar.
As it was said, "Great was the stench of death. After our fathers and our grandfathers succumbed, half the people fled to the fields. The dogs and the vultures devoured the bodies. The mortality was terrible. Your grandfathers died, and with them died the son of the King and his brothers and kinsmen. So it was that we became orphans, oh my sons! So we became when we were young. All of us were thus. We were born to die."
The pox had gotten most of them and the rest usually ran as far away from the White men as they could get, but it rarely helped, because the pox always traveled ahead of them, and it would be there, waiting for their arrival.
There simply was no escape. The ones who had run before had carried the plague with them, its virulence reaching out to eventually kill most of those they came in contact with, and those carried the disease forward, ever toward the deepest, darkest reaches of the jungle where the Indians had gone to hide from the ever-expanding grip of the White man.
The little band reached the end of that stretch of the raised limestone sacbe that was the Maya 'walking highway,' they entered into the choza-filled outskirts, the many little huts of the village that no one seemed able to name.
Awed by the silence and human emptiness they progressed slowly toward the Plaza Mayor, often preceded by emaciated snarling dogs backing away from them. Wild pigs rooted among the remains of bodies scattered about, snorting to defend their food.
Every once in a while one of the Brothers looked into one of the whitewashed oval chozas and emerged seconds later, shaking his head. With an angry cry, one of the Brothers ran forward and beat off the pigs tearing at the body of an infant in the mud. A useless act, to be sure. There was no way to beat off all the animals that were feeding on human remains throughout Mexico.
It was not until they tried to pass through the deepest jungle that the Brothers heard the sounds, and finally found the little band that had hidden deep in the forest and were deeply afraid of the 'White ones.' At the same time the Brothers saw that the frightened group had returned to the worship of the old gods and even had a black-robed blood-soaked priest who facilitated the rites.
Spain was torn between conflicting priests and the pressure of the ecomienderos, the great plantation owners. The old argument as to whether the Amerindians had souls still raged sotto voce. King Carlos V and even the Pope, pressured beyond resistance by the fulminations and machinations of Bartolomé de Las Casas had finally issued the edicts that held that Indians were men like other men.
However, the Conquistadores and their successors, now transformed by enormous Royal Land Grants in honor of the fantastic feat of handing a rich, civilized country intact to King Carlos V of Spain to plunder and bleed, were created ecomienderos.
But their vast estates did not come without a price. Spain demanded its pound of flesh in the form of taxes and impuestos, impoundments. The Crown wanted a stiff percentage of every Real that came out of Nueva España.
In return the ecomienderos took it out of the Indians. The Indians may technically not have been slaves, but they sure had all the appearances of it. While they could not be legally bound to the land, there was more than one kind of law in Nueva España. There was a secular law, the royal edicts, and then there was the religious law.
Oh, there is little doubt that the original Friars came with only the best of motives. They intended to bring the Indians to the ‘Light of the Lord’. They thought that they had only to open the door and the Indians would see the error of their ways and come flocking to Jesus.
The Friars tried. They baptized the Indians en masse, often in Spanish, which the Indians didn't understand, often with little or no instruction. They thought to touch the Indians with the wand of Christianity, and they would catch fire with the power of the Gospel.
Nice idea, but it didn't quite work that way. There were other factors at work.
There were thirty-seven of The People in their forest hide-a-way, sheltering within the shallow caves gaping in the friable limestone hillside. The Friars ignored the old ones and the sick ones. They would be left to die on their own. The Maya Priest-Shaman was turned over to the eight soldiers accompanying the Friars. They killed him without ceremony. They took the infants and young children, as well as the compliant younger ones. The two who had resisted were also turned over to the soldiers to be murdered.
The Spanish took 26 people of the village back to Itzamal, and among them was myself as a dignified elder who seemed strangely unbowed by the hard life on the milpas, by name Ik Chel; and a young boy, Hotoch Xiu, whom De Landa gave the baptismal name, Heriberto Lazarus, for he had been raised from the dead.
I was kept for the assistance in various of the languages that I could be to the Bishop in the construction of his dictionaries. I was that old man, and the one language that I didn’t tell them about was Spanish.
Thus was I introduced to Fray Diego de Landa, Provincial of Itzamal and later Bishop of the Yucatan.
3632 words




XIII
CHAPTER THE THIRTEENTH
RUNNING FROM THE GAUPUCHINES
In which I flee from the Spanish, going ever deeper into the Selva













RUNNING FROM THE GUAUPUCHINES


I ran from the desolation of my birthplace at Itzamal, and for two years I wandered.
It was in the year 1525 that the perfidious Cortes cruelly murdered our Lord Chief Speaker, our last Lord Chief Speaker, Cuatemoc. I was not quite ready to leave at that time, but I finally set out in 1528. An exhausted and feverish Cortes had already landed back at Veracruz, and was slowly working his way back to Mexico City when I left, in fear for what Cortes’ return might bring.
It took many months for us to cross the landscape of horrors that the Spanish had made of our lands and come to Itzamal, but after the reality of my homeplace had bludgeoned its way into my brain, I was lost. I went from place to place in a red fog, and was as a wild thing. The villages I stumbled into took pity on me as mad, and somehow I survived this confused state to reemerge about 1532.
In between I crossed and re-crossed the Yucatan and Chiapas, often driven before the oncoming Spaniards as they relentlessly thrust deeper into our heartland.
The Yucatan and Chiapas had to wait for their turn to be conquered. First came the unbelievably rich harvest of central Mexico, and then they turned to other places.
The Guapuchines, the foreign rulers, came to the Yucatan with a rather inauspicious beginning. There was a shipwreck in 1511 and the Spaniard Aguilar, he who was later translator for Cortes, was stranded and captured by the Maya.
In 1517 came the first real Spanish incursion into the Maya lands. Soon beaten off by Maya warriors, they nonetheless took back tales of gold, the one thing that was as a fever to the Spanish.
A year later, in 1518, there was another landing, and this time there was some trade enacted between the Spanish and the Indians, until again, the Spanish were driven back to the sea. This time they actually took back gold trinkets that whet the appetites of the Spanish back in Cuba.
Again and again they came, always to be driven off, but usually they took back some trinkets of gold with them to keep the hunger alive.
In 1524, the Spanish had come up from the south in force to invade Chiapas, and Pedro de Alvarado, the one we knew as Tonatiuh, the sun, finally won the last major battle against the lowland Maya warriors of the inland.
But the coast was still an enclave of freedom for the Maya. It was not until 1526 that the elder de Montejo mounted a serious expedition. He and his band of adventurers were able to penetrate as far as Chichen Itza before they were mousetrapped and then driven back to the sea.
Back in the highlands, the fierce Chiapenecos had beaten off the Spanish until 1528 when the Spanish triumphed in a last battle in the canyon Sumidero where the remaining warriors committed suicide by jumping off the 1800-meter cliffs into the Grijalva River rather than become slaves. The Spanish celebrated by founding the town of Villa Real de Chiapas, a fortress-city that we soon came to call Villa Viciosa because of the evil acts that were enforced from that city.
The Spanish have always taught that it was their invincible armies that conquered, but it was not so, they had allies that are not now recognized. Their greatest ally was the sickness that they brought with them, a sickness that laid low most of my people and left the door open for them to take advantage of those that were sick and dying. My people called those days a time “when the vultures came into the houses”, because there was no one to tend the dead.
An ally that is not given enough credit is the Christian God. From the first, the Spanish insistence on converting us to their god had been a problem. Conquerors had always insisted on adding their gods to ours, and we were well used to it. After all, the Aztecs had forced their god Huitzliopochtli upon their client states, and we did not think that this was too serious a departure. It just meant that we had to add a few more priests to serve that god, while we kept all our original gods. At least that is what we thought.
And there were other things. We were familiar with the cross, we had one ourselves. And drinking of the blood of Christ was familiar to us as sacrifice, in spite of the fact that they did not use real blood. Christ as the bread of life was duplicated in our maize god, and the Madonna was echoed in several goddesses. We even associated Christ as the Sun God. The colors of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are the same as our four gods, the Bacabs who inhabit the four quarters of the sky. Not only that, but we were able to associate the Catholic Saints with several of our gods. So there were great similarities and for a time afterwards, the Mexicans had a habit of crucifying young men so that each village could have our own Christ.
The problem was the exclusivity demanded by these new priests. It was something we had never had to face before, and the thought of being punished for worshipping our own gods after accepting the new Christian gods, was almost incomprehensible. We learned the hard way, through whippings, torture, imprisonment and even death, but we learned. Not so much to exclusively worship the new gods, but to accept them as disguises for our own gods.
We accepted the priests without question. Priests had always been the civic leaders within the community, and for us there was no difference between religion and politics. Within an amazingly short time, the people had accepted the exclusive leadership of these new Christian priests, who sometimes fought the ecomienderos on our behalf, and sometimes used their men to enforce our worship.
Christianity was still seen by us as something foreign; accepted, but still foreign, until a great phenomenon came to our land, the result of a vision beheld by a simple Indian named Juan Diego in 1531.
It is told that Juan Diego was going to an Aztec religious site, a hill that commemorated an Aztec goddess, and as he approached the hill he heard music, and smelled a pleasant perfume coming from the small hill. A sweet woman’s voice called, 'Juanito, Juan Dieguito...’ He climbed the Tepeyac hill and he saw a beautiful brown-skinned Mexican-appearing young woman standing there dressed in clothes of light. As he climbed the hill she said, 'Listen, my little son, Juantzin, where are you going?' And he answered: 'My Lady, Queen, my little girl, I'm going to Tlatelolco, to hear the things from God'.
She told him She was the Virgin Mary, mother of the true God, and She asked him to go to México City, to the Bishop's Palace, to tell him that She wanted a temple built on the Tepeyac hill for Her. He promised the Lady that he would obey her, and he walked all the way to Mexico City to talk with the Bishop, Fray Juan de Zumarraga in the palace.
He told the Bishop of all the marvelous things he had seen and heard, and of what the Lady had requested, but the Bishop did not believe him. Returning to the Tepeyac hill. She was waiting there for him, and as soon as he saw Her, he said, 'Lady, Queen, my little daughter, my little girl, I went there to fulfill your orders. The Governor Priest was kind to me, he listened to me, but I think he did not understand and did not believe me. So I beg you, my Lady, Queen, my little girl, that you send one of your noblemen; because I am a simple man, I am small, I am like a wood ladder, I need to be guided, so that I will not fail you, and I don't want you to be angry at me'. She insisted that he was the one that had to carry Her orders; nobody else. He again promised to do as She asked.
Next day, he went to the Bishop again, repeating his story. The Bishop asked him many questions, but finally said that, in order to build a temple, he needed a token, a sign from the Lady.
Back at the hill, he told Her everything, and She asked him to come back the next day when She would give him the sign asked for.
Next day, Juan Diego did not meet the Lady, because his uncle was very ill, and he went to visit him. He spent the night there, and next morning, very early, Juan Diego started walking to find a priest for his dying uncle. He avoided the hill and the Lady, but She appeared in front of him and asked him, 'What happened, my little son? Where are you going?' He told Her that he was going to get a priest, because his uncle was dying. She answered: 'Put this in your heart, my little son: do not be afraid. Am I not here, Me, your mother? Are you not under my shadow, under my care? Am I not the fountain of joy? Are you not in the crease of my cloak, in the fold of my arms? Do you need anything else?' Your uncle is sound at this very moment.
She told him to climb the hill and cut the flowers, and he was amazed to find many beautiful flowers up there, as this was only December and too early for them. He cut the flowers and putting them inside his cloak he came back to Her. She took the flowers in Her hands then put them back inside the cloak. She sent Juan once more to the Bishop, to show what he carried in his cloak.
Again Juan Diego told the Bishop of his four visions, and the Bishop asked Juan to show what he was carrying. When Juan opened his cloak, the flowers fell to the floor, and there, forever there on the white fabric of the cloak, was the image of the Lady from Heaven, Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe.
That cloak was the same one that was enshrined in the mighty church that Bishop Zumarraga erected for her.
Is the story true? ¿Quien Sabé? Who knows? It is said by some that it was all of Fray Zumarraga, even though it is well known that he was a hater of our religion. It matters little, except that from that time until this, we have a goddess that is in our image, that has our same brown skin, that is not white like the Guapuchines, and from then on, Christianity is no longer foreign to us and is fully accepted by the Mexicans. In a way, that is a miracle of its own
Then too there was the warlike nature of my people that acted against us. We had always fought, one against the other, until a measure of equilibrium existed between the warring factions. In the Yucatan, it was the Cocom family of Uxmal against the Xius of the great city of Mayapan. In Chiapas and Guatemala, it was the city kings that battled against each other.
Into the backdrop of these ancient conflicts strode the Conquistadores promising each side independence and protection from their enemies, undertaking to enter into the conflict on one side or the other, tipping the balance of power. The Xius accepted the Spanish offer. They were the traitors that brought down the Maya. In the end, the Spanish lived up to at least a portion of their promises, they tipped the balance of power, but what they had really did was divide and conquer, for in the end it was the Spanish alone who were triumphant.
In 1541 de Montejo founded the walled-fortress city of Campeche that was a port-city bastion on the peninsula, but close enough to Veracruz for reinforcement. By 1542, the Spanish were sufficiently strongly entrenched in the Yucatan to build their capital city of Merida upon the very ruins of the Maya city of Tiho, using the blocks of Tiho to build the structures of Merida.
The Spanish built cities, as we had never seen cities. First they built a giant cathedral, usually from blocks of a Maya sacred site that they had leveled, but they built these churches unlike any sacred sites that we knew of. These ‘churches’ were in fact fortresses built for defense, impregnable sanctuaries from which attacks might be launched, and to which the soldiers might return to be safe. It was around these places of safety that the city was built outward.
The strict accounting of the ecomiendas quickly tied the Indios in knots. There was gold in the Yucatan and Chiapas, but it was not the yellow metal. The gold here was in slavery. The Indios were kidnapped and shipped anywhere that would buy them, mostly to the Caribbean, where they were needed to replace those who had already died due to disease and overwork.
By 1546, the Indios were fed up, and an estimated 20,000 warriors surrounded Valladolid (which we still know as Zaci), but we were unable to sustain a long-term siege and eventually disbursed. It was planting time, heralded by an infestation of the Sh’mantelees, the dreaded locusts, and the farmers could stay no longer to wait to kill the Gaupuchines, lest their families starve. I was there, in a blood lust, but when it was over, we melted away into the ground and the Spanish, which then came out after us, could not find us. I will say more later of how stupid and blind were the Gaupuchines. It was almost too late, for by 1550, the slavery trade out of the Yucatan had virtually come to a stop. There were simply no more slaves to send. 90% of the populace was gone. Gone to sickness. Gone to warfare. Gone to slavery.
This Zaci uprising was to be the forerunner of many such spontaneous uprisings, always unsuccessful but always demonstrating the mood of the people.
Finally those who wanted no more of it removed themselves to the island of Tay-itza, an island that you know as Tayasal, an island in the Department of the Peten, a subdivision of Guatemala. There they still stay, even though the ferocious greed for gold of the Spaniards has propelled them into attack after attack.
I readily confess that most of those years have gone from my mind, for that time was only for me a spell of red haze, a terrible blood-lust that I was eager to expend on the Spanish. I was always placed in the forefront of any fight, for I was considered as mad and god-protected, and it may well be that I was. No matter how fierce the fight, or how many of the hated Castilianos or their Tlaxcalan allies, It seemed as if I could not be hurt.
I know not how many of them I killed, but I do know that it was as many as I could. I sometimes returned from the battle covered with blood. These were no longer ‘Flower Wars,’ where we tried to take prisoners for sacrifice. No, this was for the killing.
I remember only the time of Sumidero Canyon, maybe it was the horror of the day that brought me back, and maybe it was only the wish of the gods. We had fought the entire day, but there were so many of them, and so few of us. Back and back they pushed us, all the way up to the top of the cliffs, fighting all the way, but when we were at the top, with the cliffs at our backs and a huge drop behind, we realized that it was over, and there was no place to escape. We all knew what the punishment would be for having raised weapons against the Spanish. They would be sure to burn us alive, except that those that were fit would be turned into slaves.
We had no escape, and our warriors began to throw themselves over the edge to their death. I climbed over the edge and hid myself in a small cave that was there beneath the edge of the cliff, where I waited until all sound was gone, and then made my way down the trail, and then made my way to the place you know as Valladolid, but which for us will always be Zaci where I could kill more of the Guapuchines.
I joined the fighters at Zaci, wearing my Jaguar uniform, where I could do what I did best – kill. 2831 words
.
XIV
CHAPTER THE FOURTEENTH

XIBALBA
In which I discover what had been hidden from me and the great secret of the maya.







XIBALBA – THE PLACE OF FRIGHT

I was there at Zaci to kill the Gaupuchines, but that only happened right at the beginning, before they withdrew behind their fortified walls. Even then, it had been mostly women and children, because the Spanish men knew enough to travel in armed convoys through our territory. They knew we hated them, and that was before we had reached any strength. Once we settled into the siege, they never came out from behind their walls, but instead flailed at us using their cannons and even their ballistas.
At first we mounted attacks on the fortified walls, but it was like waves being dashed against boulders, and we were the waves. We could have taken Zaci, but it would have meant revealing our greatest secret, and that we would not do.
The Spanish did not know. They still do not know. They will never know. They may have taken Cemanahuac, but we still held Xibalba. We had often heard that the Gaupuchines talked about how difficult we were to fight because we were able to vanish like smoke. That when they chased us we were sometimes able to vanish ‘as if the earth had swallowed us up…’ It had!
They never understood our religion and our obsession with the afterlife, with Xibalba, that ‘mythical’ underworld. They knew of the Seven caves of Chicomoztoc of the Aztec tribes in Aztlan, the cave origin of the Mixtecs, and the underground water caverns of the Maya, even of the underworld of the Quiche Maya. The legends of the Aztecs talked of 9 levels of the Underworld while the Maya had but 5 levels.
1. Earth
2. Water passage
3. Place of the clashing hills
4. Hill of the obsidian knife
5. Place of the obsidian-bladed wind
6. Place of flourishing banners
7. Place of the arrow-sacrifice
8. Place where the heart is eaten
9. Place of the dead, ‘where the streets are on the left.’
After Zaci, we knew that the whole country had been alerted and we needed to escape the net that had been set for us. Our place of refuge was to be the island of Tayasal located in the Lake of Peten Itza. There we would be safe from pursuing Spanish troops, but first we had to pass through some 500 kilometers or 300 miles of what we could consider to be enemy country. However, that was the easy part – we disappeared!
We knew that it was not necessary to die in order to go to Xibalba.
The Spanish knew of our sacbes, our wide ‘White Roads’ made out of cemented stone blocks and crushed sea shells that went from place to place and covered thousands and thousands miles in the Yucatan. They were amazed that we had roads but used no wheels. That we could build such marvelous roads for runners, as we also neither had nor used any beasts of burden except men with loads held on with a tumpline, a securing line that went around the forehead.
They did not know. To them we were such unsophisticated savages that we did not even understand the use of the wheel – even though our children had toys with wheels. They did not understand; we did not need wheels, we had something better!
They knew we talked of Xibalba, but they thought it was superstitious fairy tales. They had seen and marveled at our cenotes, those enormous holes in the ground that were filled with life-giving water, but they never truly understood what they meant!
All of our major cities, and most of the smaller ones were blessed with the crystal-pure water of the cenotes. They were necessary because the entire peninsula was constructed mainly of limestone, and limestone did not hold surface water. When the rains came, and come they did during the season, the water almost immediately disappeared and left the land in drought; inhospitable to human life – except for the cenotes, and in a very few places the chultunes, the lined impervious water storage places.
The cenotes were necessary to the existence of life on this barren surface. Not only life at a simple survival level, but a sophisticated civilization. The cenotes didn’t exist because of the cities, the cities existed because of the cenotes. The cities were built on the cenotes, but the cenotes were more than sources of water. It was not for no reason that we called cities ‘the navels of the earth.’
We knew, and the Spanish never realized, that the peninsula was honeycombed with caverns, most containing underground rivers, and that some of these caves were tens, and even hundreds of miles long, supplying streams of fresh water to the cenotes. Over hundreds and hundreds of years, our ancestors had discovered, used and then engineered these caverns to their own purposes. In some ways, our underworld followed the ancient legend that Xibalba mirrored what was built aboveground.
From the beginning of time, the Maya had used the caverns for refuge, and also for worship, sometimes for burial, but over time the uses had changed.
From adventurers probing the extent of the rivers with dugout canoes, a complicated transport system developed whereby goods and people were transported underground using the river currents for propulsion of larger and larger craft.
Over the centuries the principal caverns had been molded and carved and shaped, and sacred monumental sites had been built, mirroring sites on the surface, and there were many people who finally had decided to live there all the time. A system of dykes, dams, locks and shunts enabled us to control inflow and outflow and we became masters of the rivers. So a system developed using the cenotes as way stations along the route, it was an arrangement that was made for a swift escape, or even the movement of bodies of men or amounts of goods from one place to another.
As for those of us retreating from Zaci, we entered the ‘Great River Tree,’ as it had come to be called, at one of the smaller cenotes, Dzilnip, which was close to Zaci. I don’t know about the entrances from other cenotes, but as for Dzilnip, it was not easy, and later I was told that many of the entrances had been changed to make them more difficult to enter, and also easier to defend.
For Dzilnip, we entered a brush-covered hourglass-shaped mouth to see what looked to be a collapsed pile of boulders, half-submerged in the beginnings of a stream. As I walked in the wall-to-wall shallow water, small fish nibbled at my calves, and bats flitted overhead. Underfoot there were limestone fins and prongs so sharp that a fall would gash me to the bone.
Half and hour after I entered, we sidled through an unlikely slot and I stumbled shoulder deep against the current, when I realized that I was completely lost, that the boulder we were passing looked like any of a dozen boulders that we had already passed. We could have gone on downstream, but our guide clambered up on the boulder, stepped high onto a jutting shelf and then scrambled up a steep slope into the darkness, the sound of the river faded below. Gradually the slope eased and the passage opened up around us. At last we reached a broad terrace where natural rim stone dams sectioned off dry pools.
The flickering light from the pitch-pine torch of the guide threw a central tableau into a sudden and frightening relief. In the middle of the chamber lay an upright human skull, the eye sockets empty, the jaw still grinning in its rictus of death. The top of the forehead had a flattened, monkeylike look to it. Each of the four incisors in the upper jaw had been filed into a tripartite fang; an over all lay a fuzzing layer of white stone. Around the cavern walls, appearing and disappearing in the torchlight, were carven three-dimensional masks or faces, visages that looked like grinning skulls.
We were only 700 meters from the entrance, but each one felt more like a kilometer than a meter. We crossed the huge open room to enter what looked to be only one of many caves leading off the room. Our guide said that any of the other entrances would have led to death, he did not say how, and I did not want to know. From there we went down a gradual slope and eventually came back to the river.
I asked why we could not have simply gone along following the river, and again our guide only said, “death.” Coming back to the river, we found that a large plaza had been carved out adjacent to the river, and over against the wall was a huge altar-like block on which lay the skeleton of a young woman spread-eagled on her back, her pelvis protruding upward like the twin horns of a Spanish saddle. Her left leg was bent out at an awkward angle, her right arm thrown above her head as if in protest, her skull and the braids of her hair were propped as if on a pillow, the eye sockets staring into eternity, the jaw gaped open as if in a scream. Below her and in front of the altar, in a narrow hollow, lay the collapsed skeleton of an infant, its skull fragmented and scattered about in abandon. In another spot was a huge pile of the pitch-pine torches, and several dugout canoes of various sizes, all of which we called Cayucos that were pulled up on the bank beside the river.
We helped push in several of the huge, fifty-man Cayucos, and loaded up for the journey
From there in our canoes on the swift-flowing river, we went back past Zaci, on to one of the main transport centers, Chichen Itza, then switched rivers to another center at Mayapan, going past Chacmultun to Dzibalchen and on to Becan and Calakmul, which was another major point and the confluence of several rivers. We then proceeded to Rio Azul before turning toward Uaxactun and then Tikal. There we stopped before going on past Yaxha to our destination at Lake Peten Itza, where the southbound river emerged from underground.
At each of the stations the cayucos suddenly went into a spin, propelled around by the current redirected by an engineered intrusion into the current, gradually slowing until the boatmen could use the paddles to redirect the canoe forward, toward the bank, or in a new direction, to catch a cross current. It was efficient and seemed to work well, but the boatmen took great glee in not telling their passengers what was coming.
Generally the travel was swift, silent and dark. Once in a while the cavern narrowed or widened, and the canoes sped up or slowed down in response to the river current. Sometimes the river was so swift that it amounted to a flume, and I was unable to imagine that anything could move as fast as we did, with our hair and our clothes whipping around us, and the torch flames streaming back like a living banner.
There were frightening splashes as things that we could not see, and which probably did not have eyes to see, jumped in or out of the river. Occasionally, luminous rocks that we could only barely see flashed by as we went down the river, and each of the cayucos had flaming torches back and front so we could keep track of each other.
We could then have gone back down into the river that then proceeded down Ceibal and even Copan and Huehuetenango. From my conversations with the priests who kept up the system, they said that below Tikal, the underground system was little used and little engineered because of both the unstable nature of the land, with earthquakes and volcanoes, but also because, unlike our part of the peninsula, there were great river systems aboveground which allowed for travel.
Lagos de Peten Itza was a natural outlet into which we were suddenly and frighteningly shot from complete blackness to brilliant sunshine, and for just a very short time we were actually out of the water and flying, until we came down with a gigantic splash, which was quite a conclusion to our two-day journey.
Friendly hands hauled our cayucos up onto the Tayasal beach. Here there were no great monumental temples, no pyramids and few priests. It was a refuge of the Quiche Maya, but in those terrible times, we were all just Maya, and ancient enemies became brothers there on Tayasal. We finally realized there was only one enemy, and they were the Gaupuchines.
What did I do there on that peaceful island? Me with my training as a Jaguar warrior and advisor to the Lord Great Speaker? I joined the island Council, but most of the time I helped build the cayucos, and the physical labor was wonderfully calming to my mind, and after a while I was finally able to live without that terrible blood lust. Oh, I still hated the Gaupuchines, but at least I was able to live with it.
Tayasal lay in the center of the large lake, provided with a natural barrier against invaders, and in spite of numerous abortive attempts, mostly by rag-tag Spanish mutineers, they had easily been driven off. Tayasal was just too hard to get to and too insignificant to mount a serious attack, and so, there we were safe, and at last I could rest.
I went with raiding parties back into the caverns and then out into the world of the Gaupuchines, an avenger wearing my Jaguar uniform, and I cut down more than my share of enemies, but I no longer wanted to die. Life was finally good, especially after I met the woman I had always waited for, Autumn Sunset. Beautiful and calm, a plump, brown-skinned, black-eyed woman who had lost her husband to one of the sicknesses of the gods. With Autumn Sunset and her shining little daughter Dawn Brightness, I was more than satisfied to settle down into the life of Tayasal, and we passed many happy years there. I saw Dawn Brightness married to a fine young man and give birth to a little girl of her own.
But life has its ups and downs, and one day my own sun, the light in my world, went dim, when Autumn Sunset died in one of the waves of the Mayacimil, the pox, that passed through Tayasal from time to time. I thank the gods that she went easily, but her death brought to me a great bittersweet sadness that has stayed with me since. I miss her still. I most miss her calmness that always brought me peace. I will have no more peace without her.
With her death I could no longer bear to stay in Tayasal, it was for me a great sadness, and although I gloried in Dawn Brightness and her little family, each sight of her brought her mother to me as a pain in my heart. I had to leave, and so I set about my wandering, as I had done most of my life, until I found and settled in a tiny village, which had been ravaged by the sicknesses and the Gaupuchines. I was doing what I could to help when they came, the Frays and the soldiers. 2594 words

XIV
CHAPTER THE FOURTEENTH

XIBALBA
In which I discover what had been hidden from me and the great secret of the maya.















XIBALBA – THE PLACE OF FRIGHT

I was there at our town of Zaci, that they had now renamed Valladolid, to kill the Gaupuchines, but that only happened right at the beginning, before they withdrew behind their fortified walls. At the beginning, it was mostly women and children that we killed, the Spanish men knew enough to travel in armed convoys through our territory. They knew we hated them, and that was before we had reached any strength outside of their fortress-town. Once we settled into the siege, they never came out from behind their walls, but instead flailed at us using their cannons and even their ballistas.
At first we mounted attacks on the fortified walls, but it was like waves being dashed against boulders, and we were the waves. We could have taken Zaci, but it would have meant revealing our greatest secret, and that we would not do.
The Spanish did not know. They still do not know. They will never know. They may have taken Cemanahuac, but we still held Xibalba. We had often heard that the Gaupuchines talked about how difficult we were to fight because we were able to vanish like smoke. That when they chased us we were sometimes able to vanish ‘as if the earth had swallowed us up…’ It had!
They never understood our religion and our obsession with the afterlife, with Xibalba, that ‘mythical’ underworld. They knew of the Seven caves of Chicomoztoc of the Aztec tribes in Aztlan, the cave origin of the Mixtecs, and the underground water caverns of the Maya, even of the underworld of the Quiche Maya. The legends of the Aztecs talked of 9 levels of the Underworld.
1. Earth
10. Water passage
11. Place of the clashing hills
12. Hill of the obsidian knife
13. Place of the obsidian-bladed wind
14. Place of flourishing banners
15. Place of the arrow-sacrifice
16. Place where the heart is eaten
17. Place of the dead, ‘where the streets are on the left.’
After Zaci, we knew that the Spanish in the whole country had been alerted and we needed to escape the net that had been set for us. Our place of refuge was to be the island of Tayasal located in the Lake of Peten Itza. There we would be safe from pursuing Spanish troops, but first we had to pass through some 500 kilometers or 300 miles of what we could consider to be enemy country. However, that was the easy part – we disappeared!
We knew that it was not necessary to die in order to go to Xibalba.
The Spanish knew of our sacbes, our wide ‘White Roads’ made out of cemented stone blocks and crushed sea shells that went from place to place and covered thousands and thousands miles in the Yucatan. They were amazed that we had roads but used no wheels. Amazed that we could build such marvelous roads for runners, as we also neither had nor used any beasts of burden except men with loads held on with a tumpline, a securing line that went around the forehead.
They did not know. To them we were such unsophisticated savages that we did not even understand the use of the wheel – even though our children had toys with wheels. They did not understand; we did not need wheels, we had something better!
The Spanish had a terrible superstitious fear of the darkness of the caverns, and their troops absolutely refused to enter them. They knew we talked of Xibalba, but they thought it was superstitious fairy tales. They had seen and marveled at our cenotes, those enormous holes in the ground that were filled with life-giving water, but they never truly understood what they meant!
All of our major cities, and most of the smaller ones were blessed with the crystal-pure water of the cenotes. They were necessary because our entire peninsula was constructed mainly of limestone, and limestone did not hold surface water. When the rains came, and come they did during the season, the water almost immediately disappeared and left the land in drought; inhospitable to human life – except for the cenotes, and in a very few places where we had built the chultunes, the lined impervious water storage places.
The cenotes were necessary to the existence of life on this barren surface. Not only life at a simple survival level, but a sophisticated civilization. The cenotes didn’t exist because of the cities, the cities existed because of the cenotes. The cities were built on the cenotes, but the cenotes were more than sources of water. There was a reason that we called cities ‘the navels of the earth.’
We knew, and the Spanish never realized, that the peninsula was honeycombed with caverns, most containing underground rivers, and that some of these caves were many tens of miles long, supplying streams of fresh water to the cenotes. Over hundreds and hundreds of years, our ancestors had discovered, used and then engineered these caverns to their own purposes. In some ways, our underworld followed the ancient legend that Xibalba mirrored what was built aboveground.
From the beginning of time, the Maya had used the caverns for refuge, and also for worship, sometimes for burial, but over time the uses had changed.
From adventurers probing the extent of the rivers with dugout canoes, a complicated transport system had developed over time whereby goods and people were transported underground using the river currents for propulsion of larger and larger craft.
Over the centuries the principal caverns had been molded and carved and shaped, and sacred monumental sites had been built, mirroring sites on the surface. We became masters of the rivers. So a system was born using the cenotes as way stations along the route, it was an arrangement that was made for a swift escape, or even the movement of bodies of men or amounts of goods from one place to another.
As for those of us retreating from Zaci, we entered the ‘Great River Tree,’ as it had come to be called, at one of the smaller cenotes, near Dzilnip, which was close to Zaci. I don’t know about the entrances from other cenotes, but as for Dzilnip, it was not easy, and later I was told that many of the entrances had been changed to make them more difficult to enter, and also easier to defend.
For the entrance at Dzilnip, we worked our way through a brush-covered hourglass-shaped mouth to see what looked to be a collapsed pile of boulders, half-submerged in the beginnings of a stream. As I walked into the cavern in the wall-to-wall shallow water, small fish nibbled at my calves, and bats flitted overhead. We were careful to follow the path of the guide, because underfoot there were limestone fins and prongs so sharp that a fall would gash me to the bone.
Half and hour after I entered, we sidled through an unlikely slot and I stumbled shoulder deep against the current, when I realized that I was completely lost, that the boulder we were passing looked like any of a dozen boulders that we had already passed. We could have gone on downstream, but our guide clambered up on the boulder, stepped high onto a jutting shelf and then scrambled up a steep slope into the darkness, as the sound of the river faded below. Gradually the slope eased and the passage opened up around us. At last we reached a broad terrace where natural rim stone dams sectioned off dry pools.
The guttering light from the pitch-pine torch of the guide threw a central tableau into a sudden and frightening relief. In the middle of the chamber lay an upright human skull, the eye sockets empty, the jaw still grinning in its rictus of death. The top of the forehead had a flattened, monkeylike look to it. Each of the four incisors in the upper jaw had been filed into a tripartite fang; an over all lay a fuzzing layer of white stone. Around the cavern walls, appearing and disappearing in the torchlight, were carven three-dimensional masks or faces, visages that looked like grinning skulls.
It would have been enough to frighten off any of the Spanish intrepid enough to have dared to come this far.
We were only 700 meters from the entrance, but each one felt more like a kilometer than a meter. We crossed the huge open room to enter what looked to be only one of many caves leading off the room. Our guide said that any of the other entrances would have led only to death, he did not say how, and I did not want to know. From there we went down a gradual slope and eventually came back to the river.
I asked why we could not have simply gone along following the river, and again our guide only said, “death.” Coming back to the river, we found that a large plaza had been carved out adjacent to the river, and over against the wall was a huge altar-like block on which lay the skeleton of a young woman spread-eagled on her back, her pelvis protruding upward like the twin horns of a Spanish saddle. Her left leg was bent out at an awkward angle, her right arm thrown above her head as if in protest, her skull and the braids of her hair were propped as if on a pillow, the eye sockets staring into eternity, the jaw gaped open as if in a scream. Below her and in front of the altar, in a narrow hollow, lay the collapsed skeleton of an infant, its skull fragmented and scattered about in abandon. In another spot was a huge pile of the pitch-pine torches, and several dugout canoes of various sizes, all of which we called Cayucos that were pulled up on the bank beside the river.
We helped push in several of the huge, fifty-man Cayucos, and loaded up for the journey
From there, in our canoes on the swift-flowing river, we went back past under the town of Zaci, on to one of the main transport centers, Chichen Itza. It was there that it was necessary to emerge, and we then switched rivers to another center at Mayapan, going past Chacmultun to Dzibalchen and on to Becan and Calakmul, which was another major point where we emerged again, and then reentered to find the underground confluence of several rivers. We then proceeded to Rio Azul before turning toward Uaxactun and then Tikal. There we stopped to transfer to another underground river before going on past Yaxha to our destination at Lake Peten Itza, where the southbound river finally emerged from underground.
Generally the travel was swift, silent and dark. Once in a while the cavern narrowed or widened, and the canoes sped up or slowed down in response to the river current. Although pains had been taken to smooth out any real rapids, sometimes the river was so swift that it amounted to a flume, and I was unable to imagine that anything could move as fast as we did, with our hair and our clothes whipping around us, and the torch flames streaming back like a living banner.
There were frightening splashes, as things that we could not see, and which probably did not have eyes to see, jumped in or out of the river. Occasionally, luminous rocks that we could only barely see flashed by as we went down the river, and each of the cayucos had flaming torches back and front so we could keep track of each other.
From my conversations with the priests who kept up the system, they said that below Tikal, the underground system was little used and little engineered because of both the unstable nature of the land, with earthquakes and volcanoes, but also because, unlike the upper part of the peninsula, there were great river systems aboveground which allowed for travel.
Lagos de Peten Itza was a natural outlet into which we were suddenly and frighteningly shot from complete blackness to brilliant sunshine, and for just a very short time we were actually out of the water and flying, until we came down with a gigantic splash, which was quite a conclusion to our four-day journey.
Friendly hands hauled our cayucos up onto the Tayasal beach. Here there were no great monumental temples, no pyramids and few priests. It was a refuge of the Quiche Maya, but in those terrible times, we were all just Maya, and ancient enemies became brothers there on Tayasal. We finally realized there was only one enemy, and they were the Gaupuchines.
What did I do there on that peaceful island? Me with my training as a Jaguar warrior and advisor to the Lord Great Speaker? I joined the island Council, but most of the time I helped build the cayucos, and the physical labor was wonderfully calming to my mind, and after a while I was finally able to live without that terrible blood lust that seemed to have taken root in my soul. Oh, I still hated the Gaupuchines, but at least I was able to live with it.
Tayasal lay in the center of the large lake, provided with a natural barrier against invaders, and in spite of numerous abortive attempts, mostly by rag-tag Spanish mutineers, they had easily been driven off. Tayasal was just too hard to get to and too insignificant to mount a serious attack, and so, there we were safe, and at last I could rest.
I went with raiding parties back into the caverns and then out into the world of the Gaupuchines, an avenger wearing my Jaguar uniform, and I cut down more than my share of enemies, but I no longer wanted to die. Life was finally good, especially after I met the woman I had always waited for, Autumn Sunset. Beautiful and calm, a plump, brown-skinned, black-eyed woman who had lost her husband to one of the sicknesses of the gods. With Autumn Sunset and her shining little daughter Dawn Brightness, I was more than satisfied to settle down into the life of Tayasal, and we passed many happy years there. I saw Dawn Brightness married to a fine young man and give birth to a little girl of her own.
But life has its ups and downs, and one day my own sun, the light in my world, went dim, when Autumn Sunset died in one of the waves of the Mayacimil, the pox, that passed through Tayasal from time to time. I thank the gods that she went quickly, fading even as I sat by her side, day and night, but her death brought to me a great bittersweet sadness that has stayed with me since. I miss her still. I most miss her calmness that always brought me peace. I will have no more peace without her.
With her death I could no longer bear to stay in Tayasal, it was for me a great sadness, and although I gloried in Dawn Brightness and her little family, each sight of her brought her mother to me as a pain in my heart. I had to leave, and so I set about my wandering, as I had done most of my life, until I found and settled in a tiny village, which had been ravaged by the sicknesses and the Gaupuchines. I was doing what I could to help when they came, the Frays and the soldiers. 2594 words

XVI
BOOK THE SIXTEENTH
CULTURE CLASH
The rise of Heriberto Lazarus and the preparation by the Provincial Diego de Landa for an Auto da Fe











CULTURE CLASH

When I was found there in the remnants of the little village by the Castilianos, I considered running, as I had done for many years, but I also considered that enough time had passed that they would no longer be looking for me, and besides that, I told them only that my name was Ik Chel, and I submitted to another baptism and asked for the name of James Ik Paulus, the same name I had originally been baptized under. They did not know that, nor were they overly concerned. They only celebrated the conversion of another supposedly heathen soul.
They soon discovered that I was not just a simple villager, that I knew several languages, and that I knew the history of The People.
The Provincial had always been interested in the language of The People, and by extension in our culture. Yes, it is true that I knew that he was interested in our culture so that he could help to destroy it, but I was a veritable encyclopedia of our ways, and Diego de Landa needed my help to understand them. Never did I believe that he would be able to do so. Never did I believe that our gods would abandon us. In my heart I knew that these foreigners would steal all that there was to steal and then leave to return to their homes. Never did I imagine that they would become us.
So I went with them, and served the Provincial, Diego de Landa.
The boy who was taken from the village with me, Heriberto Lazarus, as ‘Bishop’ Diego de Landa quixotically named him, was baptized under that name, God being praised that the boy had been 'raised from the dead'.
It was noticed early that the 14-year-old boy carried himself with a preternatural dignity. He was a beautiful boy, tall and well-made, but it was his air or dignity which remarked him.
What the Spanish didn't know, and I was not to discover until later, was that the young man was a Royal emissary of the Xiu lineage who had been sent from his father, the ruler of the Maya island stronghold of Tayasal, deep in the jungle fastness of what would come to be known as Guatemala by the conquerors. Maybe emissary is too strong. What he really was, was a spy.
Heriberto later told me that he knew instinctively that there was something wrong with the old Priest. It was true that priests were different, even the Maya priests were different, but this one... this one... He looked with different eyes. His eyes were blue, and among a brown-eyed people this was strange enough.
The old Priest's eyes were weak, that much was clear because of how he looked at everything too closely, but that was not it, there was more in the way that this strange priest looked at you.
We of the village went back to Izamal with the priests and their soldiers; there was nothing else to do.
The Franciscan monastery at Izamal appeared in front of us as if ephemeral, arising out of the morning mist. It was built atop a ruined Maya pyramid in the standard Franciscan monastery style which had developed in Nueva España, a mixture of a contemplative milieu combined with militant defensibility, but all imposed on top of a Maya structure that the Guachupines had destroyed that had been there long before the Spanish came.
Izamal was a center of commerce, trade and military activities during the early Spanish commercial period, as it had been for a pre-Columbian political and religious center.
We came first upon the rude huts of the Indian workers that surrounded the settlement. An Indian village enveloped and acted as a first line of defense to the little patch of Spain that lay within. The monastery itself arose out of a large area of cleared, almost dead flat land, so that it was gray and sterile. Centered in this bleak tableau a massive featureless, dun-colored block squatted fatly, relieved only by a huge, iron-strapped oaken portal flanked by two tall, narrow shadowed slits.
It was only after crossing the parched earth and being apprised by the faceless guardians, that one passed through the reluctantly opened flagstone-floored passage into an almost dreamlike fantasy.
Numerous rooms fronted by a colonnaded walkway lined the rectangle. Potted shrubs and trees softened the harsh flagstone pavement and rough stucco walls. The central quadrangle boasted several low, dark, rudimentary structures, originally meant as military barracks and service buildings, long since given over to the favored Indians of the Brothers, while the Spanish soldiers were quartered within the major buildings that lined the wall.
Block walks criss-crossed and meandered among carefully tended agricultural plots, the focus of all being the central baroque sandstone fountain. the water gurgling and splashing, sparkling in defiance of the fiery Yucatecan sun.
The air smelled of burning and dust. Wood. Food. Flesh. Hints of candle tallow. Vegetation. A whiff of forest fires. Dust floated on the still air. Everywhere there was the smell of burning. It was inescapable. Awake or asleep. Active or at rest. It eventually faded into the background and became undetectable.
The hot moistness echoed with the shrieks of birds, and grunting from the wild pigs in the underbrush. Women screamed and children cried, and over all was the monotonous pat-pat of old women making tortillas. A platoon of soldiers marched on parade, the Sargento yelling as has been the wont of Sargentos from time immemorial.
The little band straggled toward the monastery, the soldiers parceling out the villagers among the people of the colonia as they passed through to the Franciscan monastery.
The gate swung open and our little party crossed through into the inner compound, and a new life for the newly-named Heriberto. "Heri', as he came to be called was to sleep in the cell of the Provincial. He was given a reed mat to place on the tamped-earth floor, and that was his bed. It was what was considered fitting for the savages of the jungle.
De Landa did not touch the boy, though his solicitousness was noticed and remarked upon by the Brothers. It was hardly unusual for the Brothers to take body-servants, and there was nothing untoward seen in the practice.
Indeed, De Landa himself thought little of the arrangement. There was work for the boy to do. Cleaning the tiny cell, preparing or fetching meals, running errands. He soon became a favorite within the compound, making himself useful to everyone.
If confronted with his secret thoughts and dreams, the Provincial would have been horrified, for he kept the thoughts and dreams secret even from himself, viciously resisting and suppressing them, fighting his urges and rejoicing in his rectitude, finding other outlets for his drives.
The boy watched the soldiers drilling on the bare parade ground, comparing them to his father's men back on Tayasal. At first he was awestruck, seeing these stern and hairy giants in their shining armor and boat-tailed helms, but it is hard to keep respect for those you live with and see every day. He saw the soldiers without their armor, in their dirty clothes. They smelled badly and washed little, and were an affront to the scrupulously-clean Maya. He saw them drunk and foul, and saw that they forced themselves upon the Maya women living within the monastery, even though they often kept their own women. Intoxication was not unknown among the Maya. Balché and hallucinogens were part of Maya life, but they were part of religious life and kept within harsh religious strictures. Drunkenness within community life was frowned upon and seriously punished, but the religious connotations were usually enough to keep it within bounds. Among the Spanish there seemed to be no such limits.
The Maya had long ago realized that the Spanish were not gods, but only men who could die just as any man. Heri's job was to tell his father what he could of the Spanish, for it was expected that they would soon come to Tayasal, and it would be better if it were known how to fight them.
It was not only Heri's observations alone, but those of friends that he had made among the Maya who lived within the compound or outside in the village. So Heri talked and Heri observed.
Most of all he saw the Provincial in the way that few saw him. He saw the sweat and the trembling, and was often present when the little Priest beat himself unmercifully, so he knew that De Landa was a tortured soul.
That did not excuse the viciousness with which the little Priest pursued the followers of the old gods. Heri knew that few, if any, of the Maya truly worshipped this new crucified god. They worshipped the old gods in secret, and even in the little chapel that was used by the Brothers to say Mass, there were old gods buried at the foot of the cross so that the Maya could worship in the chapel, but still venerate the old gods.
The Brothers would invade the Chozas of the People anytime, overturning everything in their search for the little statues that would reveal them as heretics, for all who were within the community had been baptized.
He even went with the Brothers on their searches, doing what he could to lead the soldiers and the priests away from the hidden statues. Once in a while they found statues, and then they would take the entire family of the house back to the monastery and to the weeping stone-walled room to meet their fate.
It was Heri who realized that the vicious priests, with their soldiers and their horses and dogs would not rest until they found what they were looking for. They wanted idols and the scrolls of the devil, and until there was some success in their mad searches, they would continue to harass The People, overturning their houses, tearing up everything in their desperate search.
It was months before Heri and I became fast friends with Rodrigo, the Sargento of the little garrison. It was Rodrigo who drove the troops in their quest, but it was not Rodrigo's idea. Rodrigo hailed from the dregs of Madrid, where he had been dumped from the army after the final Spanish victory over the Muslims.
No one was aware of it, but he was a Marrano, a baptized Jew, and under the law he was forbidden to be in Nueva España, but the ships were lax and the New Spain was hungry for fresh meat, and the captains cared little if the meat were slightly spoiled. Rodrigo had military experience, and that was what was needed.
Of course, to me, all this meant nothing, for I knew naught of Jews and Muslims, and cared less.
For Rodrigo, religion had no meaning, and a god was a god for all that. It had nothing to do with him. He had always been easygoing, it made the world a more comfortable place for him. Rodrigo liked the Indians, and for his part, he was ashamed of what he had to do to them, but he knew that he was but one man, and hardly in a position to take on the Religious and the secular establishment.
Rodrigo did know of a movement among the ecomienderos to try to control the fractious Provincial because his insane crusade was causing unrest among the Indians. It was not that they cared about the Indians, they cared about their plantations, and what with the depredations visited upon what remained of the indigenous population, with the executions and the punishments, and the running away into the bush, they weren't able to get any work out of them.
The ecomienderos were a created aristocracy made up of the grateful recipients of enormous land grants parceled out by the Spanish Crown as their reward for the Conquest.
The ecomienderos were following the lead of Don Ixlotl Vergera, the son of one of Cortes original band who had married the daughter of the King of T'ho, the Maya city over which the Spanish town of Merida had been erected. The very existence of a Don Ixlotl should have been proof to us of the Spanish intent to stay in Nueva España.
The landowners had taken the unheard of step of appealing to the Audiencia in Mexico City, which had been declared the capital of New Spain by Charles V. They beseeched the powers to remove the impudent Provincial and replace him with someone more to their liking.
Unfortunately, the bureaucracy in the capital was as slow as all Spanish bureaucracy, and while the hearings and appeals to Spain continued apace, De Landa was created temporary ‘Bishop’ of Merida, and continued in his fervent prosecution of the Indian heretics.
Sergeant Rodrigo was being driven to regretted excesses by the Brothers, but in truth, it was not really their idea either. No, it all came from the fevered brain of the good ‘Bishop’.
Even though the Provincial consulted me almost daily, Heri was closer to De Landa than anyone, but that was because, as a body servant, he was close to invisible. Heri realized that the little Priest was becoming more and more anxious. His anxiety drove him on, and in turn he drove the Brothers and they put pressure on Rodrigo.
Heri could see that the ‘Bishop’ felt that he was failing. That he was losing control of 'his' Indians. All around him he saw, a real or imagined return to the old gods, and a turning away from the Gospel of Jesus.
As ‘birds of a feather’ Heri and I talked all the time. The boy had become frightened of his master. Not for himself, but for The People. It was heading for some kind of a crisis, and Heri was afraid.
We had become acquainted with the head men and the shamans throughout the region, and through them with others all through the land of the Maya, and we warned them that something was coming and they must take steps to preserve their heritage. We asked them to hide the relics, bury them, place them in caves, and send them back into the jungle, to places where the Spanish had not reached. He said that the island of Tayasal was still safe.
He knew of the codices, the sacred scrolls and also knew that the Spanish priests burned them when they were found. We urged that they be carefully packed in airtight earthenware jars and buried in safe places or in caves. It might be necessary to keep them safe for some years until the Spanish left. None of us doubted that someday the Spanish would leave and return home to Spain. Then came Heri's stroke of genius, at least it might have been his, but by the same token, the original idea might well have been mine, but it mattered little. Thinking that it might be possible to divert the ‘Bishop’, we began an endeavor that was to continue for many years, fulfilling a need that the two of us had been wise enough to recognize.
We went to many of the outlying villages, urging the Indians to begin the manufacture of crude idols and even cruder imitations of the sacred scrolls. It would be easy to do the scrolls, the Spanish couldn't read them anyway, and since they would be burned immediately, there was little danger that they would be sent back to Mexico City, where there was always the possibility that they might be discovered to be fakes.
We knew that if we could glut the foolish priests, the destruction of our inheritance might be averted, and the Brothers and the soldiers could be directed toward the fakes.
It worked in a way, but not in the way that had been anticipated. Suddenly there were idols and scrolls everywhere. The soldiers were pleased. Rodrigo was pleased. The Brothers were ecstatic, but to the ‘Bishop’, it was proof of what he had feared most. The movement to the old gods was growing, and a demonstration was called for.
He ordered that the destruction of the idols and the burning of the scrolls be halted and that they should be gathered together in one place and safeguarded against recovery by the Indians. De Landa looked to Mani. It was not a major center, like Merida or Valladolid, but one of the smaller towns near the ruins of Mayapan, the last of the occupied Maya centers. Mani had been the refuge to which the Xius of Uxmal retreated after the fall of Mayapan, but the time of Xius was long past, except that Heri was a distant relative.
Less than 100 kilometers from the monastery at Izamal, Mani had the advantage of being a relatively isolated town. At least it was isolated in the terms of the Spanish, but it was the marketplace for an entire region of relatively untamed Maya, and thus a place for an object lesson. And it had an excellent Zocalo, a plaza in front of the church that was large enough to accommodate De Landa's plan.
The ‘Bishop’ planned an Auto de fé, a formal demonstration of faith that was a favorite weapon of the Inquisition. The ‘Bishop’ was not of the Inquisition, and he lacked the authority to conduct an Auto de fé, but that had never stopped De Landa where matters of faith were concerned.
While I was restricted to conversations with the Provincial himself, the invisible Heri was present when the ‘Bishop’ discussed the matter with the Brothers and the soldiers, and he knew of the plans. The Brothers and the soldiers were to round up as many Indians they could find, and as many heretics that they could add to the 20 or so that were already chained in a barracks at Izamal.
By that time, Heri and I were able to assist Rodrigo in the gathering up of heretics who would not be missed by The People. We also aided in piling up enough of the counterfeit idols to satisfy the greedy ‘Bishop’. He was especially pleased that Rodrigo had been able to find 27 of the sacred scrolls. De Landa even thought that they were real.
He did not understand that the codices were our history and our heritage, and only because the Conquistadores had come there was no reason for our scribes to stop making our codices, and so they have continued until this very day, carefully making and illustrating the codices, and then just as carefully sealing and hiding them away.
Putting on an Auto de fé was no picnic, particularly when it was almost 100 kilometers away. There were all those dignitaries to invite, whether they came or not. And then there was the food to prepare and the wine to obtain and present properly in the feasts that were to be held for the elect both before and after the performance.
"The silver!" yelled the ‘Bishop’. "Can't forget the silver. Have to make a proper showing for the Alcaldé and the merchants of the town.'
'Oh, and don't forget to invite the ecomienderos. Can't forget them. After all, many of the guests of honor will be their workers, and then they'll see, then they'll understand what it is to have nurtured these wolves at the very throat of Our Lord.'
'We will have the Indians gather the wood for the fire. Pile it high. Build the platform for the dignitaries’ he said feverishly. ‘Oh yes, it will be remembered for generations of these savages. They'll see. They'll all see the power of the Lord. I will be vindicated.’
De Landa bustled away to order his calligrapher to pull out the finest parchment and sharpen his goose quills to prepare the invitations for the religious and secular attendees, the leading lights of Nueva España, no pureblood Indians need apply.
There were 37 heretics of one stripe or another. There were eight candidates for relaxing to the enforcement representatives of the Ayuntamiento of Merida, which was the nearest municipality of sufficient and competent jurisdiction. The stars of the show were the twelve Caciques, twelve village headmen, all of who had confessed under torture. Provincial De Landa was very proud of the Caciques.
The Brothers who had obtained the confessions were also extremely proud. After all, they had worked very hard to get the Caciques to confess. The Caciques were being held in the purpose-built cells within the compound at Izamal.
The Brothers had been extremely inventive; the tender ministrations of the good Brothers killed some under torture, luckily none of the Caciques. Some of the accused heretics, in the zeal of the Brothers to extract confessions, were left without arms or even hands to eat with.
Still others were just shorn and beaten, then forced to wear penitential robes, what the Brothers called the 'Holy Sack'. Naturally some of the accused were obdurate, and for those the Brothers delighted in hanging them by pulleys with stones of 50 or 75 pounds hung from their feet, and while they were suspended gave them many lashes until the blood ran from their shoulders and legs. Then too, some were tarred with boiling fat. They found that a very effective method of inducing eager volubility was the application of the melted wax of lit candles dripped on their bare parts. The Friars excommunicated those who opposed them. No small punishment in a rigidly religious community.
Of course, the people of their villages were gone. As well were the people of the additional two villages where accused Caciques had killed themselves. De Landa announced that the Indians, deluded by the devil, had hung themselves out of grief.
He somehow failed to announce that one of the Caciques, Ixcawatzin, had already undergone two sessions of the water treatment, where he had been forced to drink gallons of water, and then while he was stretched out on the dirt floor in pain, one of the larger brothers had been encouraged to jump on the Cacique's stomach until blood and water poured from his mouth and anus. They had not been successful with his confession. The other accursed suicide had merely been flogged.
The inhabitants of those villages had disappeared off into the jungle. The People of the entire district were on the edge of an out-and-out revolt. They were demanding the release of the leaders that had been taken from them. De Landa had called upon the Audiencia in Guatemala for additional troops, and 200 sailors had been sent, although why there should have been sailors in Guatemala was a question that begged an answer.
And then there were the ecomienderos. We heard of these from Rodrigo. The haciendados were almost in revolt themselves. It was their people who had absented themselves from the fields and the harvest. It was their crops that were rotting in the fields, and it was all because of this cabrón of a Provincial who had chosen this moment in time to play God.
Not only had De Landa become a problem, but we had also heard of a Padre Bobadillo, far off and on an idolatry rampage of his own, who had set a gigantic bonfire in the great Zocalo of Valladolid, a sacred place known to us as Zaci, and then threatened to burn the town governor and then the entire town unless the idols were turned over to him.
This was the atmosphere that prevailed as the preparations for De Landa's Auto-da-fé were made. 3962 words


XVII
BOOK THE SEVENTEENTH
AUTO DA FE
Being of the ceremony of the Holy Office of the Inquisition








AUTO DA FE

Damn Diego De Landa. Friar and Provincial of Izamal. Destroyer of artifacts and codices. Writer of the self-serving Relacion de las Cosas de Yucatan, only a portion of which survived. Since he destroyed the major part of the heritage of the my people, most of what you know of the Maya comes from his book. He was later Bishop of the Yucatan and Protector of the Indians. May his own gods damn him as he tried to damn ours.
Because the Auto da Fe had become such a feared part of our life in Mexico, I had studied the order of events, trying to understand how it was supposed to be better or even different than our practice of religious sacrifices.
No matter the nature of the ceremony that surrounded it, both heralded death as an offering to the gods.
It was in the early evening of the eighteenth day of August in 1562 when the procession started. It started on time. De Landa insisted upon it. He told me proudly that the zocalo at Mani had the look of a typical Spanish town square. It was dominated by the Church, mostly constructed of blocks taken from our temples and other religious structures. The square was paved with rough slabs, surrounded by governmental and ecclesiastical buildings, and shaded by ancient eucalyptus trees, most of which had been cut back for an unobstructed view.
Ironically, in the center was a pyramid of wooden faggots. Ironically, because Mani had been the religious center for the lesser Xiu empire, where the mighty Xius had retreated after the fall of Mayapan, so this faux pyramid unknowlingly mocked the greater pyramids of Mayapan.
In the square was the smell of fear and pitch-pine torches.
The Zocalo was ablaze with the light of torches which threw a flickering radiance over the empty faces of the Indians held under guard by the squat, ugly figures of the Audiencia's sailors. A large wooden platform festooned with scaffolds and a row of dark, heavy chairs for dignitaries, had been built opposite the church, and in front of the platform were chairs for the ecomienderos, the large plantation owners as well as other Spanish civilians. It was the platform that was the destination of the procession.
First came my friend, the squat, rumpled Sargento Rodrigo, marching in front of his soldiers, their armor gleaming and clanking rhythmically in the torchlight, followed by the column of the principal actors in the drama, and they were flanked by files of soldiers on either side. They marched to the melancholy sound of a single trap drum.
Then came the Religious, a contingent headed by the Provincial walking alone, smiling beatifically, and blessing the onlooking Indians from side-to-side. Heri followed on behind him carrying a huge, leather-bound bible held high, and I followed Heri.
The Friars were behind the us, just walking together with their acolytes rather than marching in any military fashion.
Behind them came the puffed-up local officials, the Mexican Alcaldé Mayor de Merida and Alguacil Mayor, beaming at the Spanish and waving to their acquaintances.
Then came the gentlemen of the Ayuntamiento, the Town Council trying desperately to comport themselves in a military fashion, but succeeding only in imitating a gaggle of waddling geese.
After them was the torchlit procession of members of the Holy Office, that which we call the Inquisition, together with their familiars and agents, followed by the accused persons who had confessed their guilt and declared their penitence. The penitents wore yellow floor length robes and tall yellow sambenitos and corozas, yellow pointed hoods completely covering their heads and faces but for eyeholes.
The accursed and condemned heretics followed. All dressed in the yellow 'Holy Sacks' and the tall, pointed sambenito hoods. The onlooking Indians moaned and wailed as they went by. Hooded as they all were, there was no way to tell who the individual Caciques were, but just the sight of Maya cast in the robes of shame and chained together was enough for the onlookers, and they wept openly.
After the accursed marched another phalanx of soldiers.
The procession came to the platform and the Religious followed by the dignitaries climbed the stairs and took their seats. Heri and I stood behind the throne-like center chair of Diego de Landa. The heretics were forced to their knees before the stage, with the soldiers standing over them.
The procession was followed by a solemn Mass, then by an oath of obedience to the Holy Office of the Inquisition taken by all the lay functionaries who might have to carry out the sentences.
Then came the protracted silence while everyone settled down and the natural tension built. Provincial De Landa rose from his seat and came to the edge of the platform where he stood, a scroll of parchment in his hands as he intoned the sins of the heretics. This was the Sermon.
The Inquisition was a performance with several acts. The first part was the Sermon, which was conducted almost as a trial, but only a mere formality, and ending in a finding of some predetermined degree of heresy, with sentences of condemnation, and once in a very great while, an acquittal (which did not happen in this Auto da fe), recited by the Grand Inquisitor, a title which had usurped by our Provincial, Fray Diego De Landa.
Although the sentences were supposed to be followed at a later date by the actual Auto-da-fé, the ceremony during which the sentences of the Inquisition were read and carried out. For this event, De Landa had decreed that all would take place on the same day.
Then there was the formal handing over by the Holy Office of impenitent persons and those who had relapsed, to be taken away by the secular powers. This was a ‘washing of the hands’ by the Religious so their hands would not be sullied by the blood of their victims. While their punishment usually took place some time after Auto-da-fé, De Landa was not that much of a stickler for the rules, and all was to be done together on this occasion.
It was only when the truly damned had been led away by the secular authorities that the punishments could begin. Where there was a confession or a conviction of guilt of lesser misdeeds, punishments meted out ranged from a mere mumbled recitation of prayers, through a period of fasting, almsgiving, flogging, and all the way to forced pilgrimages
Ah, but for more serious heresies, there were more serious entertainments. These escalated from the forced wearing of a yellow cross for a specific term, on to varying terms of imprisonment, confiscation of property and then on to the most serious of punishments the Church itself could hand out, life imprisonment. Life imprisonment was ‘mercifully’ imposed on those who confessed under torture as well as upon those who recanted after being sentenced to death. ‘Mercifully’ as opposed to the alternatives.
That left the condemned heretics who had stubbornly refused to recant, even though the Church spared no effort or torture to convince the heretics to recant. Then to, there were those who had relapsed after condemnation and repentance. The Church washed their hands of them, and 'relaxed' them over to the secular arm for punishment.. The Grand Inquisitor also handed over the sentences (usually death) to be carried out by the secular powers.
In handing over the heretic, the Inquisitor, using a legal formula, asked that the sentence be carried out without shedding blood or endangering life. This was intended to influence the condemned to ask for mercy and to emphasize the fact that the church itself did not shed blood.
Burning was a common method of execution and much feared by The People, so they were offered a way to avoid the fiery death. They were given the opportunity to recant at the last moment. They would still be executed, but at least their death would be by garrotte before their lifeless bodies were burned.
In a dramatic gesture, his face fevered and sweating in the firelight, De Landa commanded the burning of the relapsed ones who had died before the Auto-da-fé, including the two suicided Caciques. This, of course, meant that the bodies of the Caciques and the other dead heretics had been disinterred from their graves, but the upside was that the bodies of suppurating fat flared like torches upon the flaming pyre onto which they had been tossed like the offal that they were.
The nauseating smell of burning, rotten flesh wafted across the square.
It was a fitting inauguration for a religious ceremony, and had the added advantage of leaving the pyre burning brightly as a wonderful backdrop, and it cast the light of hell upon the faces of the condemned.
De Landa started up with the small punishments, the floggings and minor imprisonments, and after the preliminaries were over, he invited the guests to throw the large pile of idols and artifacts onto the fire being fed by the bodies of the heretics. They all had a wonderful time, drinking, yelling and throwing the artifacts to crash amidst the bones of the heretic skeletons in front of the stolid faces of the captive Indians.
It was a while before they all settled down to again hear De Landa intone the horrific litany of the heretical crimes committed by the more serious of the backsliders, including allegations of blood sacrifices. These caused expressions and outcries of outrage as De Landa painted his word pictures leading up to the punishments. Life Imprisonment was a favorite of the Provincial, but severely lacking in dramatic values.
He and the Alguacil Mayor had known that the minor punishments would only be a lull in the proceedings, so they decided to spice it up with the burning of the codices, together with the estimable Provincial's free-wheeling translation of these 27 works of the devil, in spite of the fact that the glyphs far eexceeded his linguistic abilities.
In an aside to me, the Provincial confessed that in his heart of hearts he was disappointed that the standing Maya were not more disturbed than they appeared to be. They seemed to endure the burning of the codices, and for that matter even the smashing of the idols with the same stolid mien, as if discomfitted only by their forced attendance.
Heri and I were pleased by the fact that it was only the crude forgeries that were destroyed, while the real artifacts and codices were safely buried in many ancient caverns known only to the h’men, the hereditary holy men who had taken upon themselves the preservation of our birthright, and miles away from this crazy priest. I was inwardly proud that I had a hand in thwarting the destruction of our heritage.
But the spectators loved the show, even if the ecomienderos were ever more concerned about the effect that the Auto-da-fé would have on their workers.
A favorite of the evening among the Castilianos was a graphic demonstration of the methods of the Holy Office that had been arranged by the Provincial. Several eager Friars hung a recalcitrant heretic up by his wrists. It was then that they started tying the weights to his feet while he screamed in agony. Indians may have been stolid, but under severe pain, they reacted like every other human being.
I am forever ashamed that I hung back and did nothing to save the man, but in truth, there is nothing I could have done without revealing myself, and I must admit that I was afraid for my own life.
It was unfortunate that De Landa had chosen one of the Caciques, and upon seeing him humiliated and tortured, the Maya gave voice to their outrage and started pressing against the line of sailors that was holding them back. Buoyed by the strident voice of the Provincial, the sailors forced the Maya back with their pikes at port arms, pushing for all they were worth.
It was only a matter of time before the line of sailors broke, but the Alguacil Mayor had forseen the possibility and the deafening crash of the falconets firing chain shot momentarily silenced the frenzied Indians and allowed the soldiers to move in with leveled pikes and swinging swords, while behind them were the harquebusquiers firing shards of glass and stones into massed ranks of Maya until they finally fell back and allowed the festivities to proceed, leaving their dead and wounded behind, lying in widening pools of blood.
By then, the Maya were noisy and unruly, and even the ecomienderos seemed somewhat upset. It was all the soldiers and sailors could do to keep the Indians at bay. But De Landa was adamant that the Auto-da-fé would continue to impress upon the attendees, both the gravity of heresy, as well as the will and the might that would be brought to bear upon the backsliders. All to the greater glory of God, and to the Provincial, Diego De Landa.
By the time the Cacique had 60 pounds of weights hanging off each foot, he had passed out, and this had allowed the increasingly nervous attending friars to announce that the man had confessed and it was to be hoped that the penitent one would survive to live in the ‘presence of the light.’ There didn't seem to be a very high likelihood.
The Provincial then ordered the seculars to take three penitent heretics and mercifully hang them on the scaffolds located there on the platform. They took a pleasingly long time to die, and their empurpling faces lent a touch of color to the festivities.
Soon the Alguacil Mayor and the Sargento, as well as the Teniente de soldados de marina, came both seperately and together to advise the Provincial that it was rapidly coming to the time when the Indians could no longer be controlled, and that therefore it might be advisable to bring the proceedings to a close… before they were all forced to fight for their lives.
Nevertheless, De Landa did take the time to order the burning of three relapsed former and once-again heretics atop the flaming pyre. The scent of roasting flesh and excrement was a miasma floating over the scene.
The ecomienderos were already beginning to leave, in spite of the fact that the Provincial had not yet given his final benediction.
All in all, De Landa was extremely pleased by the whole performance.
2410 WORDS


XVIII
BOOK THE EIGHTEENTH
CENTAUR
Wherein Provincial De Landa taught me the meaning of the Spanish Invasion of my Land through the allegory of a bullfight




CENTAUR

It was not originally De Landa's idea; he wanted nothing to do with it. But that didn't seem to matter. It was Cervantes' idea. Cervantes, the henequen merchant. Cervantes who had made a fortune out of the green and golden sisal plant that was used throughout the world for the hemp rigging so necessary for the sailing ships that plied the oceans of the world. Of course, it didn't hurt that the Indians worked for next to nothing on the labor-intensive plantation that Cervantes had carved out of the Yucatecan jungle.
Miguel Cervantes was not one of Cortes' Conquistadores. He was not one of the swaggering conquerors that had subdued entire nations. No, Cervantes was a lawyer from the Court of King Francis at Sevilla. He'd bought the encomienda for next to nothing from the conquistador who had already drunk and whored away his portion, and hardly needed some farm in the god-forsaken Indies.
Miguel Cervantes had the vision to see the possibilities, but he found it boring there among the savages, so he used some of his enormous profits to bring a rejoneador and his horses from Spain for the entertainment of his fellow encomienderos and the aggrandizement of Don Miguel Cervantes, this jumped-up lawyer who dearly loved for his people to call him El Patron.
Doña Maria had been horrified at the expense. She had begged her husband to reconsider. Oh, if he must, he could bring over some down-at-heels matador. They could find picadors and banderilleras among the hangers-on. Surely it was not necessary to transport the horses! But Don Miguel would not hear of it. It must be the great Rejoneador Nicolas Rodriguez Ayala de Alzibar and his horses. Only the Rejoneador would fully establish Don Miguel as of the highest status.
El Patron brought his people to Muna to build the Plaza de Toros. It would have been less expensive to have constructed a makeshift bull ring, but that would not do for Don Miguel. Only a permanent ring would do and it would be a legacy which would proclaim how great a man Don Miguel Cervantes was.
Ten tiers high, they made it, the first tier being the boxes for the dignitaries. The box for the Presidente was set up on the fourth tier on the sombra side, and large enough for an entire entourage. There were arches and whitewashed stucco, just as there had been in Spain. It was the first bullring in Nueva España.
It had not originally been the Provincial’s idea, but as time passed, he began to see the possibilities. It would be an important event in the short life of Nueva España, and the focus would be on the little town of Muna, and thus on the Provincial, if he supported it. It would be the establishment in the new colony of one of the oldest of Spanish traditions, and an important step forward in the establishment of the Spanish culture.
And it would provide an entertainment where there were too few diversions to turn aside the enticements of the devil.
In many ways, it soon became the Provincial’s entertainment, somewhat to the annoyance of the lordly Ecomienderos Don Miguel Cervantes, but there was obviously nothing to be done about it.
There had never been bulls in Nuevo España and the Indians were terrified of them. Even If there were cattle in the country that had been brought over to breed, there were no bulls like the ones that had been imported from Spain for the Rejoneador.
His name was Embajador and he weighed over 1100 pounds, he was huge and bulky in the front while his hindquarters were quick and agile. The horns were a flattened classic 'u' and the right one had a recently broken tip that left a sharp jagged weapon. The broken horn distressed the beast. I had been told by the Sargento that the horns were related to a cat's whiskers; that they were needed to guide the bull, and suddenly one was missing, and the bull was angry and disoriented, not a good state for a bull to be in.
Embajador restlessly paced the corral, intimidating the cows that had been placed there to pacify him, leaving them to huddle against the rough wooden fence as the setting sun cast ever-longer shadows across the sand.
Diego De Landa attended the corrida the next afternoon. Everyone did, at least everyone who was Spanish. There were even a few of the more civilized Indians there. It was enough to fill the venue and then some. De Landa and Heriberto and I got to sit in the President's box with Don Miguel, who was understandably excited about the turnout, but De Landa was more interested in conveying his view of the world to his young acolyte and I.
"So, Heriberto and James, now you will see, in this one celebration, the power of Spain and Christianity played out as a parable. I no longer think of you as pagans for I have seen you become more and more civilized, even as I have watched you grow and mature in your faith. You have been able to see and understand all that Spain and Christianity can bring to your people, and in what you are about to witness is an affirmation of the natural order of things that you can carry back to your people.'
He continued on, waxing expansive as he spouted his stable-yard philosophy. “The rider of the horse is Spain, tall and proud, brave and enterprising, pitted against a brutish beast that is overwhelmingly larger and stronger than he is, but which is doomed to defeat by the superior intelligence and strategies of the courageous Spaniard. Mark you well the progress of this confrontation, for as it goes in the ring, so shall it be enacted on the pages of history. This is Spain's century, and nothing will stand before her!"
Heriberto listened, as did I, but as the confrontation progressed, I could see clearly that the bull was steadfast and honest, but that the Spaniard on horseback was duplicitous and counterfeit. It became obvious and that the bull was being defeated by trickery and misdirection. That he was being tortured beyond endurance to finally be coldly murdered by the scuttling puntillero who crept up on the wounded creature from the blind side and in a most cowardly act, plunged the knife in to cut the spinal cord, killing the bull just as surely as if it were a puppet whose strings had been cut.
I could see the parallels all right, but what I deduced from the proceedings was considerably different from what De Landa wanted. I was determinably and understandably on the side of the bull, wishing only to mentally impart to the poor beast some of the deceit necessary to prevail in the contest.
The spectacle started at sunset. so the sun would not be in the matador's eyes as he faced the bull. Another unfair advantage for the Rejoneador.
The sun was fading from the powder-blue cloudlessness as the shadows crept across the circle. Liquid, brassy notes drifted over the arena to sound the first tercio. A blackness burst across the sand, a blacker shadow within a shadow, hooves booming a drumbeat in the sudden silence. 3,000 voices struck dumb by a power, by a living threat. The shrill giggle of a woman momentarily pierced the mood.
A wicked horn thunked into the red-painted barrera with a sound that reverberated throughout the arena.
A jagged wooden shard suddenly showed bone white, prized free with a toss of the nightmare head as Embajador wheeled to continue his rampaging circuit of the sanded circle there in Muna.
The watchers of the Torero's cuadrillo critically judged the moves and feints of the 1000-pound monster as it careered around the ring,
The Rejoneador sat tall and rigidly upright on his magnificent chestnut stallion Aldebaran, watching eagle-eyed from behind and over the closed gate. He, close-clad in a beautifully cut gray whipcord suit, called the Traje Corto Andalusia from the place where it originated, and wearing the traditional flat-topped black hat, the Sombrero Cordobes, square upon his head, his insolent pigtail clearly showing underneath. The coleto, the pigtail that is the professional mark of a torero who has taken his alternativa and is no longer a novillero.
Wavy jet-black hair and aristocratically Spanish features belied the 34 years and more than 50 corridas of Nicolas Rodriguez Ayala de Alzibar.
Man and mount together. Aldebaran was only one of the four superb thoroughbreds that were the real stars of the show, more for show and admiration than anything else. Still to be seen were; the ebony Mazzantini, white flowers entwined in his mane, white star on his forehead dripping down onto his muzzle; the dazzlingly white Chicuelo, his mane sporting black flowers; and the crowd favorite, Cagancho, a huge dapple gray horse, stolid and phlegmatic. Each of them had been painstakingly trained together with their rider to perform one of the very distinct acts leading to the inevitable taurine death, but to do it in an exhibition of flawless horsemanship, of prancing, bowing and breathtaking leaps.
The Rejoneador is a very different kind of torero. Not for him the brilliance of the suit of lights, or the massive implacable looming of the hated picadors. No, this is the elegant lightness of a man as a prancing equestrian against this primordial monstrosity.
He fights in the old way, in the way the kings sported, from the days of King Carlos.
This is a gathering of knowledgeable aficionados; these men from the dregs of cities like Madrid and the harsh plains of Extramadura, and are not put off by the blood or the brutality, but are instead entranced by a ballet of courage and grace in a pas de deux with brute energy.
They came alone or in their twos and threes, hungry and homesick for the sights and the smells of Spain. Thus it always has been and always will be with colonists, those exiles from their home country.
Color and light and sound flood the senses. Mexico has always been a land of harsh sun and primary colors, mostly startling reds and vibrant yellows. The sky is the bluest of pale blues. Sand sparkles as it waits for the blood and the blackest shadows hint of the underworld.
Rhythmic Indian music inspires dancing outside the Plaza de Toros but gives way inside to liquid trumpet tones, rolling drumbeats and the intrusion of fat German tubas brought over from Spain. Inspirational music, stirring, even heroic. A rollicking popular tune of the day bounces and echoes around and off the hard concrete, seemingly unmuffled by the myriad bodies. Spanish music, reminiscent of the softer colors of Spain played out here against the harsher backdrop of Mexico.
Cries of the hawkers of wineskins and cacahuates (peanuts) annoy as they dance nimbly along the aisles threading their way through and over feet and ankles.
Some think the bull brutishly stupid when nothing could be further from the truth. Bulls are so intelligent that they can only be challenged once and then must be killed because they learn so fast that they would be too dangerous for any torero.
It is trickery that kills the bull. Misled from the true target by fluttering capes and flags, or by the tantalizing tail of the horse, and then, when he knows better, by the false vitality of a blue and white banner that the Rejoneador trails and the bull chases. The art is in keeping the horse just away from those seeking horns.
It's easy to ridicule the art of the man on the horse. Easy to say that it is the horse that is most in danger and that, as opposed to the matador on foot, the Rejoneador has interposed the horse between himself and the terror. That would be wrong, for as this drama of death plays itself out, it clear that the man and the horse have melded and that the danger to the horse has also become the danger to the man.
In another act of the drama, the giant gray Cagancho pranced sideways across the ring under the masterful hand of the Rejoneador, each mincing step precise and sure, while Embajador stood guard over the patch of sand that he had marked out as his own.
That is the wonder of the Rejoneador, the complete marriage of the horse and rider so they become one. So that Cagancho can respond instantly to Juan's bidding. The man the brain, the horse the body. The prancing may seem effete, but instead it is an exhibition, proof to the spectators that they are an entity capable of challenging this throwback to another, more primitive time.
The bull seems a monstrous, implacable, irresistible destroyer. A force of nature that could never be withstood.
But that would be false, for it is the Rejoneador that is the implacable force, that has decreed the time, the place, and the manner of death for the animal. And the bull? He is but a dull and bewildered plaything for the game at hand that he does not understand is all rigged against him.
The crowd stamps and whistles at the performance, but is restless, like some enormous living, breathing, sentient thing waiting for the preliminaries to be over and the main event to begin.
The Rejoneador deliberately edges his mount into the zone that the bull has marked for his territory, and so begins the dance. Embajador shifts himself to face the incursion, snuffling, snorting and then pawing the ground, tossing gouts of sand and dust behind him. Juan looses the reins, guiding Cagancho only by the gentle pressure of his knees against the horse's withers as they proudly approach the waiting animal. In his right hand Nicolas grips the wooden shaft of the cruel rejon, the five-foot lance with the six-inch, leaf-shaped tempered iron head.

Again the trumpet sounds, and it is the second tercio. De Alzibar gallops out of the gate and then stops stock still so that his elegant black, Mazzantini can execute a perfect bow to the delight of the crowd. The intense duet continues as the rejoneador places the special long banderilleras in a breathtaking display of horsemanship.
Fresh from what he sees as his recent triumphs, the bull moves out to confront his antagonist, and almost immediately charges, trying to attack the horse as it tantalizingly stays just out of reach, but Embajador is confused by the flags, or by the tantalizing tail of the horse, and then, when he knows better, by the false vitality of a blue and white banner that the rejoneador trails and the bull chases. The art is in keeping the horse just away from those seeking horns.
Cagancho prances sideways across the ring under the masterful hand of the rejoneador, each mincing step precise and sure, while Embajador again stands guard over the patch of sand that he had marked out as his own.
That is the wonder of the rejoneador, the complete marriage of the horse and rider so they become one. So that Cagancho can respond instantly to Juan's bidding. The man the brain, the horse the body. The prancing may seem effete, but instead it is an exhibition, proof to the spectators that they are an entity capable of challenging this throwback to another, more primitive time.
The rejoneador deliberately edges his mount into the zone that the bull has marked for his territory, and so begins the dance. Embajador shifts himself to face the incursion, snuffling, snorting and then pawing the ground, tossing gouts of sand and dust behind him. Nicolas looses the reins, guiding Cagancho only by the gentle pressure of his knees against the horse's withers as they proudly approach the waiting animal. Nicolas has handed his pole-mounted flag to one of his peones behind the barrier and exchanged it for the next weapon in the event. In his right hand Nicolas now grips the wooden shaft of the rejon de castigo, the punishment spear, a five-foot lance with the six-inch, leaf-shaped tempered head. This takes the place of the brutal picadors.
The bull lowers his head and charges, arrow-straight at the slow-moving man on horseback. A gentle nudge aims Cagancho like a bullet from a gun at the oncoming creature of darkness. In seconds the horse is thundering to meet Embajador. At the last second the horse pulls up short and the man leans over to plunge the blade into the great animal's bunched neck muscle. The crack of the shaft breaking off the blade echoes throughout the stone tiers, leaving the sharpened edges of the iron weapon to saw at flesh and sinew with each movement, and runnels of dark blood course down the heaving black sides to plop audibly onto the sand as Cagancho spins, taking Nicolas from harm's way and out of the ring.
With a few turns that dislodges the annoyance, the bloody iron rejon de castigo falls to the sand, and Embajador trots back to his territory after successfully driving off the invader, waits warily for the next attempt, suspiciously eyeing the movements of the man on horseback as he leaves the field of battle.
All retreat to leave the black monster standing alone in the ring, watching warily for what comes next.
Finally, the trumpet sounds for the last time, and it is the time of the third and final tercio, the suerte suprema, the time of the faena and the lance, the avisos; and too, the time of the puntillero.
Nicolas the torero enters and sidesteps his horse Cagancho gracefully over to the box of El Presidente and doffs the traditional flat-topped black hat, the Sombrero Cordobes, asking permission to kill the bull. El Presidente waves his dazzling white kerchief to give permission, and Nicolas turns and offers a brindis, a salute to a stunning young woman in the front rows, throwing her the Sombrero Cordobes backward over his shoulder as she smiles, standing and stretching lithely, to catch it high in the air, all to the cheers and applause of the crowd.
This is the final act, and the crowd settles down with a critical eye, awaiting the artistry of the torero and his mount, their melding with the bull so that all become one in an almost sexual blending. This final act requires a supernatural ability of the centaur, the torero and his Cagancho, to judge and anticipate the moods and moves of his bull.
As always, it is the third tercio that is the climax, with the horseman wielding the rejon de muerte, a lance to kill the bull. It is a feat that some say takes even more skill to hit the right place than that of the matador on the ground.
The target for any torero is a small soft spot at the base of the bull’s hump, where the sword or the lance can penetrate directly to the heart of the bull, dropping him like a rock.
The best way, maybe even the only way, to do it properly is for the bull to stand stock still and upright while the rejoneador takes a stance about eight feet from the nose of the bull, points the lance at the ‘sweet spot’, then makes a short run, leaning over to strike right between the horns in a single daring thrust, graceful, brave, and possibly even foolhardy, exposing both rejoneador and his mount to the horns.
But, enough of the fantasy; now for the realities. In front of the torero is a half-ton of wild, killing animal, unlikely to stay still while the hated centaur approaches, is open to a direct, or even an indirect attack. For the rejoneador, both the bull and the horse are likely to be moving when the spear is placed.
As a prelude to death, the rejoneador and his horse, again trailing the flag, charge and chase the nightmare, making death-defying passes ever closer to the horns and the blood-flecked flanks, and performed almost in the face of the turning, charging and spinning animal, again and again, the huge head tossing, the horns sliding against and through the deceptive solidity of the flags or the horse’s tail, until finally the bull stands rooted to the spot in exhausted confusion.
Now it is time for Nicolas to show what he is made of. He is a lone man with a horse, one entity alone with the black monster on the sand. No hiding place. No escape. Taunting, calling, cajoling, disdaining, turning their backs, prancing away, then returning so that Nicolas could touch the bull’s nose and even the top of the monster’s head.
The exhibition goes on for ten minutes, and then the first trumpeted aviso, the first warning sounds. Now is the time for Nicolas to exchange the stick for the lance, the killing blade only marginally concealed by a tiny flag, its only purpose to distract the eyes of this black blur of death.
Embajador is bewildered and drained, never in his life have his deadly horns hooked at something and failed to impale it solidly. He does not understand and, head lowered, he struggles mightily with the phenomenon.
Taking advantage of the bull’s very temporary condition, the rejoneador sets himself in preparation, then leveling the lance, he signals Cagancho with his knee, and the perfectly-trained stallion charges at Embajador.
Everything is right, a picture of how it should be done, the bull is a statue, head lowered. The rejoneador is leaning over his horse on a perfect course for the rejon de muerte to strike and enter the ideal spot on the hump to kill the animal outright…
Then, two feet away, the tableau changes, Embajador shakes off his lethargy and the great muzzle comes up; just enough to spoil the aim of the lance. Instead of cleanly entering the hump, the point of the spear strikes the solid forehead, skittering off the solid bone, the impact tearing the lance from Nicolas’ grasp so that it shoots over the top of the neck to land quivering in the sand five feet away.
The groan of the unforgiving crowd rises like a cloud as Embajador wheels at the same time as Cagancho, and begins to drop his head to gut the horse.
The peones swiftly appear, running at the bull, waving capes to distract the suddenly energized bull, blood splattering from the graze, now turning and spinning, from the disarmed torero. Meanwhile, to a chorus of boos and whistles, another rejon de muerte is brought out to him as the failed rejon is whisked away.
Embajador momentarily sidetracked, the peones fold their concealing capes, and disappear to leave Embajador standing, warily eyeing the again approaching centaur, in a replay of the killing tableau. But this time the bull isn’t playing, and he charges.
But he is charging with his head lowered, and that is what kills him, for this time the rejon de muerte enters smoothly and continues on, further and further, until the massive body shudders, then suddenly goes to its front knees, skids a few inches and then just falls over heavily, raising a cloud of dust.
Cheers and shouts of “olé” accompany Nicolas as he raises his hands and grins at the stands.
Then there was an amazed ‘Oh’ from the stands. The puntillero, the ‘tacker’ had scuttled out with his short, sharp razor-sharp knife to cut the bull’s spinal chord, the coup de grace, but as he began his surgical insertion, the cut awakened the bull, and he rose bellowing and scrambling to his feet, the centaur fell back, and the peones again appear. This time they successively cape the bull, so that he is spinning, spinning and turning, until he just runs out of life and crashes heavily to the ground, churning up another cloud of dust.
The mulillas whip their mules to drag away the carcass, leaving a trail of blood.
The bulls enter the ring so alive, and they leave so dead.
The great rejoneador Nicolas Rodriguez Ayala de Alzibar took the obligatory triumphal circuit of the ring to accept the faint applause of the now-contemptuous crowd. There would be no trophies for this torero, no ears and no tail, only because of the botched killing. It seems cruel to denigrate the whole perfect performance of the rejoneador because of one unexpected and unavoidable movement of the bull, but that is not how the aficionados see it. To him, the event is a dance performed by partners, and if one of the partners does not cooperate, then the whole dance fails.
There was more, but I had had enough as I saw my Mexico lying dead on the ground in this Spanish bullring. I mumbled my excuses to the good Provincial and left the ring to breathe deeply of the rich Mexican breezes.
4161 WORDS


XIX
BOOK THE NINETEENTH
ENEMIES OF DE LANDA
The Provincial Makes Many Enemies and one Friend










DE LANDA’S OPPOSITION

You may wonder how it is that I, a lowly Indio, know so much of the mind and the emotions of the lordly Bishop of the Yucatan, Diego de Landa. It is because, in a strange way, I became the best friend that De Landa had. Notice I do not say that he was my best friend, because I could never bring myself to trust him completely.
He had never been easy in society, and as a ruler he was often autocratic, but as time went on and there was no friend that he could confide in, I believe that he saw me, as a lesser being, domeone he could confide in without fear of betrayal, for who would take the word of a single Indio against that of a Bishop of the Holy Church?
So I came to know him, his strengths and his fears, and in return I stood beside him, giving him advice, or counsel, or just listening as he vented. It could reasonably be said, and later was, that no man truly knew de Landa, but so far as was possible, I think that I knew him.
He tried to teach me his culture, his values, his god, but in the end, I like to believe that I taught him as much, or maybe more, than he did me.
In many ways, he became caught in two worlds, but of neither. When he first came to the Yucatan and Izamal, he had been horrified by what he had seen of the religious practices of the Indios. Aided by the secular officials, who were terrified that among the codices were records that clearly showed Indio ownership of land, he, and other Religious did everything possible to destroy any written records for what they might contain, even though they could not read them.
They were too infected by the legalism of Spain. We needed no such records. Ownership of land in Mexico was determined by strength. If the tribe could not defend the land, then they did not own it. In a very crude way, the same thing had happened with the Spanish. If the Indios could not defend the land, then they no longer owned it, and the Spanish could parcel it out as they saw fit, and none went to the Indios.
It was over this ownership of land, and the control of it, that many battles were to be fought, often between the encomienderos and the Religious. The encomienderos, the land holders resented any interference from anyone, much less the Religious. The Friars were always pressing the local Indios were always being pressed into service on behalf of the Religious. Building the missions. Tilling the fields. Attending religious service, teachings, festivals, indoctrination, all of these took time that was being taken from the service of the encomiendas.
Then too, the ecomienderos were used to harshly treating the Indios as if they were slaves, killing, torturing and raping, all with at least the tacit approval of the secular authority. For the most part, they were the secular authority. The Spanish Religious fought (oft-times hypocritically) for the rights of what they considered to be their charges, and they were often supported by the Spanish authorities who eventually had power and influence over the encomienderos. So the landowners hated him, as did the secular authority.
Then too, the Indios hated him, for they saw him as an impossible taskmaster and as an unforgiving Christianizer. They saw him as a terrible punishment when any of them transgressed in the slightest. The encomienderos hated him because he would not let them punish the Indios enough, and the Indios hated him because he punished them too much.
I was not aware of it until much later, but the General of the San Franciscan Order in Spain soon heard of the excesses of the bullfight, for which he blamed de Landa for sanctioning it, then there was the horrors of the Auto da fé, and by then he heard more than enough of the depredations of his Fransicans in the Yucatan. He resolved to clear the situation and urgently applied to His Majesty to have a permanent Bishop appointed for the Yucatan, where the only religious authority was the renegade De Landa, who had taken unto himself far more power than was ever envisioned. He had made himself into a despot.
Thus was the time of De Landa’s greatest triumph also the seeds of his downfall.Apparently, the situation in the Yucatan had already reached the ears of the King, and the request of the General was answered almost immediately by the appointment of another Franscican, Don Fray Francisco de Toral, as Bishop of the Yucatan.
Fray de Toral, who had been on an assignment in Mexico City, proceeded directly to Campeche to take over his duties, to usurp the powers of De Landa, and to send the Provincial back to Spain for proceedings against him.
Toral originally lodged in the convent, but his treatment at the hands of the Franciscan Brothers, who were of the Order and who had been complicit in the actions of De Landa involving the Indians, was such that he was forced to remove himself to the house of Don Lorenzo Avila, a civilian, until he could clean out the nest of vipers that inhabited the convent.
The ex-Provincial Diego De Landa was in Spain from 1962 until 1573, first in hearings before the Council of the Indies and then in front of the Franciscan tribunal of Fray Pedro de Bobadilla, Provincial of Castile, under orders of the King to investigate and perform justice. This worthy convened seven learned persons, including De Landa's friend and mentor, the licenciate Tomás López, who had been Auditor in Guatemala as well as a judge in the Yucatan. It could be said that it was under his directives that De Landa was proceeding in the Yucatan.
Even after the humiliating actions of Toral in reversing the effects of Franciscan domination, De Landa was sufficiently assured to complain of Toral's actions, both to Mexico City, and to Spain as well.
The crack in this wall of confidence was the letter of Diego Rodriguez Bibanco, by royal appointment, Defender of the Indians of Yucatan, sent to the King on March 8, 1563. Following his mandate, he wrote:
Diego Rodriguez Bibanco, citizen of Merida in Yucatan, Defender of the Indians of this province, named by your majesty as granted in your royal Audiencia of the Confines, whereby it is my obligation to report to your majesty on their needs and grievances, herein give the harm that has been done to them by wounds, deaths, losses and disturbances.
What happens is that the friars of the order of San Francisco in this province used the ecclestiastical jurisdiction before the bishop's arrival, saying they had the power by apostolic bulls to do this in places where there are no bishops; and in this title, good or bad, using the said bulls, which it is understood did not give them the right to do what they have done, they gave orders to proceed against the Indians of all these provinces, generally, por via de inquisicion, the Provincial constituting himself Inquisitor, and accompanied by the subordinate friars who also served as inquisitors; and together or singly they have inflicted irregularities and punishments on these Indians never heard of in all the Indies, under color of and saying that they were idolaters.
And in order to have more power and force than they had, they called for aid from the alcalde mayor of the province, doctor Diego Quijada, whom your majesty sent here two years ago more or less; he inconsiderately, being a weak man of little judgement or prudence, gave them lay judges who carried out all that the friars directed; this without any process, nor fault in the Indians, whereby the royal aid was given solely on the information of the idiot friars, some of whom do not even know how to read.
And so, with the power they claimed as ecclesiastical judges, and that which your Justice gave them, they set about the business with great rigor and atrocity, putting the Indians to great tortures, of ropes and water, hanging them by pulleys with stones of 50 or 75 pounds to their feet, and so suspended gave them many lashes until the blood ran to the ground from their shoulders and legs; besides this they tarred them with boiling fat as was the custom to do to negro slaves, with the melted wax of lit candles dripped on their bare parts; all this without proceding information, or seeking first for the facts. This seemed to them the way to learn them.
The poor Indians, weak and miserable, afflicted and maltreated, in fear of the torture, while under the torture confessed irregularities they have neither committed nor thought of, saying they were idolaters, and had quantities of idols, and had even sacrificed human beings and done other great cruelties; all being false and stated in fear and for the pain they had suffered.
Thus they brought in a great quantity of idols they had in ancient buildings and the woods and caves, already left and forgotten, and said that they now had and used them; on which confessions, without listening to the Indians or to their Defender, or making any verification beyond what came by the tortures, they sheared them, beat and punished them, usually every one in the pueblos they visited. Some individuals, leading caciques and persons, they condemned to ten years slavery more or less; put on them the penitential sambenito garments of the Inquisition, banished them from their signories and towns, and made them slaves, and so treated them. From all they also exacted fines of two, three or more ducats, and from the common people two or four reales, by which they collected great sums of money; and in this way they did with most of the Indians where the Inquisition and punishment were instituted. They made two Autos of Inquisition, erecting high tablets and banners with insignia, such as your majesty's inquisitors use, putting great numbers of Indians in the province in the corozas (shame headdresses) and sambenitos, and declared it was necessary in the case.
From all which, and much more I cannot tell your majesty for the prolixity, the great harm to the Indians resulted; for seeing the things, they fled many to tyhe forests, others hung themselves in despair, many others were left wounded without hands or feet, and many others died of the tortures inflicted. Thus the whole country was afflicted, aroused, oppressed and maltreated, until last August the bishop, don fray Francisco de Toral arrived, named by your majesty as prelate and pastor for this province; who took on himself the matter and the state of things he found, and before whom I, in the name of the Indians, asked relief.
This I could not do before, because the friars laid public excommunication upon any person who opposed them, saying this was improper, and interfered with the Holy Office of the Inquisition, because it was the royal Justice who gave the chief favor to the friars. Thus I could not use my office, for they deprived me of liberty; only by letter could I admonish them, but these did no good. Before the bishop, who heard the charges without passion and with Christian zeal, I laid the charges and showed the Indians molested without fault; thus a great number held in prison were freed; the sambenitos taken off, they were taken from the slavery imposed, and wherein they were, and the land was quieted, when it was without doubt at the stage of dissolution.
All this put the friars to great pain, knowing the wrong they had done, without order or justice; and thus they tried in every way to find faults in the Indians, to show that it had all been necessary. To this end I am advised that they secured proofs by rewards. The alcalde mayor presented witnesses to testify that he was a good governor, speaking in his defense and that of the friars, and declaring that the punishments had not been severe, and the like. Desiring to excuse themselves before your majesty, they took pains to get statements in their favor, saying that it was all in the service of Gof our Lord and your majesty, and that they were not guilty, seeking to do you wrong, that you might not give remedy.
So it would be useless unless your majesty should provide a judge who would hear all, as I tell your majesty and have proven to the bishop, and will prove when called upon, and should relieve these poor people of the wrongs inflicted with no fault done by them: attacks, killings, loss and destruction of their houses and property, banishment. I in the name of these poor ones in my charge, and of the other Indians of these provinces, complain before your majesty as I can, as is my duty, and beg with all the proper respect that you grant the needed remedy and justice to these Indians; and against the alcalde mayor, who has done so great harm; and against your ministers and friars who have done it, that they be punished either by your prelates or those who should do this, and remove them from this land, in which they ever hold hatred against the Indians, since they cannot go on with that they have done; the same the alcalde mayor who seeks all kinds of vexations to prevent their speaking or complaining of what has happened, so that they are put in fear and afraid, wherein I fear rebellion and destruction.
Thus I humbly implore your majesty that you order it remedied, in the service of God our Lord and the good of these poor ones and the service of your majesty. I am not sending the processes of what took place and was done before the bishop, for they are long and costly. Your majesty will understand the truth from what the bishop will inform you, and what he shall say in justice as a servant of Our Lord and zealous in his and your majesty's service, and for these poor ones. May Our Lord guard the sacred Catholic and royal person of your majesty for many years, with the increase of lands and dominions.
That your majesty be advised, I ask the royal secretary of the council of this city to attach the certificate that I am such Defender of the Indians. Sacred Catholic royal majesty, I kiss your royal feet.
Your humble vassal,
DIEGO RODRIGUEZ BIBANCO

On February 12, 1567, Melchior Pech, the governor of the Samahil province, Juan Pech and Juan Ek, town governor of Suma, Pedro Pech, town governor of Kini, and Luis Pech, town governor of Moxop'ip', supposedly sent a letter to King Charles in Spain, as follows:
Because we, your majesty's vassals, all understand the desire your majesty has that we shall be saved, and to provide sufficient ministers in your majesty's dominions to enlighten, instruct and teach those who are ignorant, and that although far from those realms of Castile, your majesty has the same care for us as if we were near, and that it is your pleasure and care that we be told what is most truly needed, according to our inferiority and capacity, and our poverty in temporal goods; Wherefore we make known before your majesty that from the beginning of our conversion to Christianity we have been taught the doctrine by the Franciscan friars, and they have preached and in their poverty do preach and teach us the law of God. We love them as true fathers, and they love us as true sons, and because of sufferings and infirmities and persecutions of the demon, they have been very few in this country, and since no others arrive, as it is so far from the land of Castile.
For this cause we beg that you will have compassion on our souls, and will send us Franciscan friars who will guide us and teach us in the way of God; and especially those of them who have been in this country, and went back from here to Castile, those who know well our language in which to preach and teach us; they are called fray Diego de Landa, fray Pedro Gumiel of the province of Toledo, and especially fray Diego de Landa for he is great, sufficient, worthy and good in the eyes of our Father God, who calls on us much to be Christians; Miguel de la Puebla and the other padres, as many as you see good to send. And because we understand that jointly and quickly we may do service whereby your majesty with Christian heart desires us all good, and so we trust that we may be quickly aided by your majesty, whom may God shine on and ever increase your vision in his service.
Here in Yucatan on the twelfth day of February of the year 1567.
We are subject in your majesty's realm and kiss your majesty's sacred hands.
Several exact duplicates of this letter, in the same Maya wording and handwriting, as well as the Spanish translation, were sent to the King, and this raised some eyebrows as to their expression of true Maya sentiment.
The Maya wording was particularly interesting because before De Landa came to power as a Provincial, he had been a scholar of the Maya, and had even prepared a Maya dictionary. This is not to say that De Landa wrote the letters, but his facility with the Maya language, as well as all the copies apparently being exact copies of each other, certainly gives rise to questions without answers.
Apparently generated by the former letter, it was followed by an actual letter from Francisco de Montejo Xiu, the Governor of Mani and other town governors, sent on April 12, 1967. This letter told a little more, and a little different part, of the story.
Sacred Catholic Majesty:
After we learned the good, in knowing God our Lord as the only true god, leaving our blindness and idolatries, and your majesty as temporal lord, before we can well open our eyes to the one and to the other, there came upon us a persecution of the worst that can be imagined; and it was in the year '62, on the part of the Franciscan religious, who had taken us to teach the doctrine, instead of which they began to torment us, hanging us by our hands and whipping us cruelly, having weights of stone on our feet, torturing many of us on a windless, giving the torture of the water, from which many died or were maimed.
Being in these tribulations and burdens, trusting in your majesty's Justice to hear and defend us, there came the Dr. Quijada to aid our tormentors, saying that were were idolators and sacrificers of men, and many other things against all truth, which we never committed during our time of blindness and infidelity. And as we see ourselves maimed by cruel torture, many dead of them, robbed of our property, and yet more, seeing disinterred the bones of our baptised ones, who died as Christians, we come to despair.
Not content with this, the religious (i.e. the friars) and they royal Justice, held at Mani a solemn auto of inquisition, where they seized many statues, disinterred many dead and burned them there in public; made slaves of many to serve Spaniards for from eight to ten years, and placed the sambenitos.The one and the other gave us great wonder and fear, because we did not know what it all was, having been recently baptised, and not informed; and when we returned to our people and told them to hear and guard justice, they seized us, put us in prison and chains, like slaves, in th monastery at Merida, where many of us died; and they told us we would be burned, without our knowing the why.
At this came the bishop whom your majesty sent, who, although he took us from prison and relieved us from death and the sambenitos, has not relieved us from the shame of the charges that were made against us, that we were idolaters, human sacrificers, and had slain many men; because, at the last, he is of the habit of San Francisco and does for them. He has consoled us by his words, saying that your majesty would render justice.
A receptor came from Mexico, and made inquiry, and we believe it went to the Audiencia, and nothing has been done.
Then came as governor don Luis de Cespedes, and instead of relieving us he has increased our burdens, taking away our daughters and our wives to serve the Spaniards, against their will and ours; which we feel so greatly that the common people say that not in the time of our fidelity were we so vexed or maltreated, because our ancestors never took from one of his children, nor from husbands and wives to make use of them, as does you majesty's Justice, even to the service of the negros and mulattos.
And with all our afflictions and labors, we have loved the fathers and supplies their necessities, have built many monasteries for them, provided with ornaments and bells, all at our cost and that of our vassals and fellows; although in payment of our services they have made of us their vassals, have deprived us of our signories we inherited from our ancestors, a thing we never suffered in the time of our infidelity. And we obey your majesty's justice, hoping that you will send us remedy.
One thing that has greatly dismayed us and stirred us up, is the letters written by fray Diego de Landa, chief author of all those ills and burdens, saying that your majesty had approved the killings, robberies, tortures, slaveries and other cruelties inflicted on us; to which we wonder that such things should be said of so Catholic and upright a king as is your majesty. If it is told that we have sacrificed men after that we have received baptism, it is a great and false witness invented by them to gild their cruelties.
And if there have been or are idols among us, they are but those we have gathered to send to the religious as they required of us, saying that we had confessed to their possession under the torture; but all know that we went many leagues to gather them from places where we knew that they had been kept by those before us, and which we had abandoned when we were baptised; and in good conscience they should not punish us as they have done.
If your majesty wishes to learn of all, send a person to search the truth, to learn of our innocence and the great cruelty of the padres; and had not the bishop come, we should all have been brought to an end. And though we cherish well Fray Diego and the other padres who torment us, only to hear them named causes our entrails to revolt. Therefore, your majesty, send us other ministers to teach us and preach to us the law of God, for we much desire our salvation.
The religious of San Francisco of this province have written several letters to your majesty and to the general of the order, in praise of fray Diego de Landa and his other companions, who were those who tortured, killed, and put us to scandal; and they gave certain letters written in the Castilian language to certain Indians of their familiars, and thus they signed them and sent them to your majesty. May your majesty understand that they are not ours, we who are chiefs of this land, and who did not have to write lies nor falsehoods or contradictions. May fray Diego de Landa and his companions suffer the penance for the evils they have done to us, and may our descendants to the fourth generation be recompensed the great persecution that came on us.
May God guard your majesty for many years in his sacred service and for our good and protection. From Yucatan, the 12th of April, 1567.
Your majesty's humble vassals kiss your royal hands and feet.
Several exact duplicates of this letter, bearing the same Maya wording and handwriting, as well as the Spanish translation, were sent to the King, and this raised some eyebrows as to their expression of true Maya sentiment.
The Maya wording was particularly interesting because before De landa came to power as a Provincial, he had been a scholar of the Maya, and had even prepared a Maya dictionary. No one knew for sure that De Landa had written the letters, but his facility with the Maya language, as well as all the copies apparently being exact copies of each other, gives rise to questions without answers.
The stage was set for the charges to be brought against De Landa, and the sides were clearly drawn, but a wild card was to be introduced by De Landa, in the form of his book, the very book that was to provide the bulk of the history and culture of the pre-conquest Maya, Relacion de los Cosas de Yucatan. I know that it is a strange book, part history, part apologia, part work of ethnology, and part brief for the Defense.
There is little doubt that it was to play a major part in his case, but why did he write it, and what was in the mind of this complicated man who was my companion, if not quite my friend? 4324 words



XIXa
BOOK THE NINTEENTHa
VOYAGE INTERRUPTUS
Whereby De Landa and I embark on a forced voyage toward Spain.





VOYAGE INTERRUPTUS

It was obvious that they who sent us did not care whether we made it or not. It was very disheartening, not only to the Provincial, but to me as well. They could have sent us on one of the great galleons 800 or so tons that regularly plied the Oceans between Nueva España and Spain, but no, we embarked very early one morn, taken to the docks of Campeche in a tiny bergantin- barkentine-, a small craft that amounted to a longboat. The small craft boasted only a single triangular lateen sail and oars with eight crewmen. It was being used to transport 10 prisoners in chains to Hispaniola for a hearing before the Governor there. We were not in chains, but where could we go? The bergantin was not really meant for the open ocean and would have been easily swamped in any heaven seas. Luckily this was not the bad time of the year, and I expect that it was deemed safe for the relatively short trip to port at Hispaniola, where we were to transfer to another vessel for the longer voyage to Spain.
In spite of the cramped quarters, it was a not unpleasant voyage. The seas were calm and mildly rolling, and it was a brilliant sunny, cloudless day with a mild freshet to relieve the heat.
When we reached dockside in Hispaniola we no more than debarked to the dock when we were escorted by two soldiers to a sleek, larger caravel of some 250 tons named Santa Catalina. Caravel’s were renowned sailing ships, and Columbus’ Nina and Pinta of some 70-years earlier had both been caravels, but the craft were still much smaller than the fabled galleons, or the navios de gavia, or even the merchant noas. The crew of the Santa Catalina carried a crew of 37 and a Portugese captain. Our vessel carried two square-rigged sails on twin masts, as well as a triangular lateen sail on the mizzen. Again, it was no longer really meant for ocean travel, but was now used for shallow bays or larger rivers. Nevertheless, here we were.
As we boarded her, we were disappointed to see that her first appearances had been deceiving, for she was a slovenly ship, heavily loaded with cargo, with her paint peeling, her decks scuffed and sails patched. She had no oars and was only lightly armed with small swivel guns, depending on her speed to avoid the English pirate corsairs that plied these waters.
Although we were given a tiny, cramped cabin below, the Portagee, as De Landa called him, gave us to understand in his bad Spanish that we were not welcome on his ship and that he insisted that we stay completely out of the way, preferably remaining in the cabin, particularly in heavy weather.
The captain’s reference to heavy weather did little to calm my stomach, which was already upset, more by the way we were being treated than by any motion of the ship.
That was to change rapidly as we left the calm of the bay and went out into the open ocean. I was surprised to see that we had joined a small fleet of two galleons, three merchant noas and two more caravels, all rolling easily in the deepening swells as dark clouds scudded overhead.
A friendly crewman told us that the convoy was necessary because of recent pirate activity, but that the heavy cannons of the galleons would keep us safe. It was on the second day of a relatively east sale that there was a sudden commotion and much shouting as it had been discovered that the convoy was being tailed by a ship that was only rarely visible above the horizon. Nevertheless, she dogged us relentlessly.
It was on the fourth day out that the storm hit, and I was terrified. I had never been on a ship before, let alone a small ship in a violent storm that threatened to capsize us with every wave. While I was terrified, the crew did not seem disconcerted, and I quickly realized that this was all normal to them. But not to me. By this time I was ill unto death from the terrible torquing, rolling, swinging, and up-and-down of the vessel. Many times I wished to die, even contemplating throwing myself over the side, but that raging ocean frightened me more.
We could see nothing through the driving rain and the spray roofed over with the flat black ceiling of continuously moving clouds.
I first realized the life of a sailor when one was tossed off the rigging in one particularly violent wrenching swing, and I could hardly hear his scream as he dropped down through the shrouds, bouncing off one or two to land splat on the deck. It was certain that he was dead, and none of the other sailors, busy with their critical duties, took the time to see if their fellow had survived the fall. The sailors had gone aloft to furl the sails in the blow, but they were not in time with the center mast, and one particularly violent gust shredded the huge square sail, the scraps trailing, flapping and cackling in the slipstream.
The wind screamed through and around the ship, while it creaked and groaned like a tortured thing, bucking and shuddering as if she would tear herself apart. The crew went about their business in the midst of this terrible chaos as if it was an everyday thing. Maybe it was to them, but not to me. The captain had admonished us to stay below in heavy weather, and that was all right for De Landa, who stayed there and prayed for deliverance, but not for me. The stifling, tumbling, shadowy cubicle imprisoned me, and I had to get out into the air, no matter what the perils were.
I know not how long the terrors continued, for as it seemed endless I lapsed in a kind of faint, but in the way of the sea, it lessened and increased, lessened and increased, then lessened, and lessened. Finally the swells finally regularized and the clouds cleared to allow the stars of the night to shine through; and welcome they were, too.
It was immediately clear that we had lost the convoy, and all around us was a vision of nothingness, only black water and stars, with nowhere any sign of life. The Survey of the ship after the storm revealed that she had sprung a substantial leak below the waterline, and along with the shredded sail and several injured men, that was enough to force the Santa Catalina to put into Bahia for repairs.
I knew not where Bahia was, and in my battered and nauseated condition, I did not care, except that my spirits rose with the thought that we would be on land - any land – once again, and I would be in a place where the earth did not move under my feet.
We arrived at Bahia some days later, to see that another of our convoy, the mighty merchantman galleon, Santander, had also put in for repairs, and I spent the two weeks we had there mostly flat on my back savoring the stillness of my bunk, and the wonder of tasting food again without the rebellion of my stomach.
Everywhere in Bahia was the talk of the English privateers, and it was rumored that the English captain Teach was plying the Gulf Stream, and had captured and taken the galleon Andonguin , putting all on board to the sword, and sending her back to England with a prize crew. Of course rumors were only rumors, and there was rarely any confirmation of what were often nightmares of children and old women.
Santa Catalina was hauled out and put up, while the crew worked over her, scraping her bottom and filling leaks with tar and oakum while the sailmakers worked. I was not surprised to see that our elderly lady had not been fitted with a copper bottom, for I was told by my new friend, the crewman Sanchez, he who filled me with useless and nonsensical ship’s lore, that copper was reserved for the noas and galleons. Several other ships were also in because of storm damage, and several of the captains were working to put together another convoy for safety.
We sailed off into the brightness of the day and the intermittent mirrored flashes from the waves as they rolled in. My own familiar nausea sent me to the rail as soon as we hit open water, and I resigned myself to not dying while wishing for death. As the days passed and we crept up the coast of Africa burdened by the slowest vessel of the pack, which happened to be us. Time passed and we soon lost sight of the other ships. We sailed on, plodding through the reasonably placid seas as it became clear that one of our leak patches had failed, and our pumps were kept thumping and sucking day and night, accompanied by the rhythmic chants of the sailors as they sweated over the machines that kept us afloat. All aboard collectively prayed to their respective gods to keep another storm from us. I had seen the face of Chac, my storm god, and I did not want to see him again.
It was about a week after that when a sudden commotion starting with the lookout on the topmast announced the sighting of a following ship that was gaining on us. The crew was excited but I saw no sign of the fear that wrapped me like a cocoon. Our stalker was soon clear to see, a black shark-like shape with mountains of sail, coming up fast on our stern. It flew no flag but needed none, its shape announcing its menace.
When she was, maybe 10 ship lengths behind us, her fore-cannon boomed and created a fountained eruption just ahead of our bowsprit, and the Portagee sent the boys aloft to drop the sails, and Santa Catalina came to a dead stop. I was amazed. I would have tried to outrun the corsair, even though it was hopeless, trying to put off the time of reckoning as long as possible. I went below to help De Landa choose the absolute necessities to take with us if we were captured, but when something bumped the side of the Santa Catalina, I went up on deck to see if I could get a head start on our fate.
The corsair, and I could now see that she was bigger and longer than we were, was lashed alongside, and her crew were now aboard our vessel. To my surprise there was no fighting, not even any real hostility. If anything it was quite the opposite as the pirates and our sailors greeted each other as long-term friends. I was confused until Sanchez brought one of the cutthroats over and introduced him as ‘Jim’, saying that he was my namesake. I was greeted effusively, although ‘Jim’ called me a savage, obviously not meaning anything by it.
Sanchez soon cleared up the seeming anomaly by explaining that all the sailors who plied the regular routes were well-acquainted with each other, and the hostility of the privateers was reserved for Spain’s soldiers and any merchantman who put up resistance, for such would prove the worth of her cargo and her value as a prize.
Clearly, Santa Catalina was no prize.
They left as they had come, speeding ahead under full sail, seeking fatter prey than our poor old caravel, and we were allowed to continue on unmolested.
Days passed uneventfully into weeks as De Landa and I passed the time in desultory conversation, mostly one-sided, about the planning of his defense, but we were still so far from Spain that there was no urgency in the discussions; the tension was ramping-up, and I could see the time approaching when we would seriously get down to work.
When Chac returned, he came with friends. Not apparently satisfied with his former attack, the storm god fell upon us with a vengeance. There was not even time to lower the sails, and they were ripped away with a long roar that trembled through the hull and up through my feet. Now the loose lines became vicious whips that could lay a man completely open or render him headless before the instrument could be seen or heard whistling through the rain-swept air. Something happened to the lashings of the deck cargo, and bales and heavy boxes became missiles that made their own path through sailors, soldiers, and passengers,. They smashed through railings to be propelled into giant white-marbled green-gray waves rising up alongside our sore-beset vessel, to sometimes be rejected and tossed back at us, exploding on the deck in a welter of splinters and contents.
I went below, gingerly negotiating the narrow, moving gangway, to join the praying Provincial, thinking that the best place to avoid all the flying detritus. It was some time before the storm subsided and we could no longer hear the frantic pounding of feet on the deck above us. I went up to see an amazing sight. Most of the upper deck had been swept clear of obstacles. The ‘sticks’ – masts – were gone. Apparently overboard in the blow, taking sails, yards, stays, lines, everything. I was surprised at the new stability of the craft until I realized that she was lying very low in the water and someone yelled that the hold was filling with water. Realizing we were sinking, I excitedly ran below to get De Landa, and together we made our way back to the deck, where I found my friend Sanchez.
Agitated, I urged Sanchez to get ready to abandon ship, but he looked at me quizzically. “Abandon ship? How? There are no lifeboats, and the single small pinnace has been swept overboard and is gone. Would we wish to join the tiburon – sharks – that own these waters? And”, he asked, “where would we go? Look around, do you see any land?”
I foolishly looked, although I already knew what I would see.
“No”, he said, “better to stay where we were, in the middle of the well-traveled sea lanes, and hoping the Santa Catalina will stay afloat until another ship comes along, and rescues us”.
“But what if she sinks?” I asked Sanchez.
“You must tell him, Padre,” Sanchez spoke to De Landa. “Tell him that we are in the hands of God, and only he will decide if the Santa Catalina does, or does not sink.”
I was not much satisfied with that answer, for if his God was to decide, I would surely be left behind in the sea, for me, I would stay with Tlazolteotl – our Queen of life. She must have been working for me because the Santa Catalina settled until she was awash, but still remained afloat. We stayed in our waterlogged home for another four days, and just as everything was growing moldy, along came the small merchantman noa, Concepcion. We were rescued and taken to the stone quays of the port city of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Concepcion could have taken us with her, but there would not have been enough food, and besides that, she was on her way back to Hispaniola, and we had no wish to return when we were so close to Spain.
We had to stay, shipwrecked on the Canary Islands for almost two months before a ship put in that was on its way to their home port of Cartagena. That meant passing through the Strait of Gibraltar and into the Mediterranean. There were many ships outbound, but few came this way by the Canaries, returning to a Spanish port, because few found it necessary to stop so close to the homeland.
It mattered little, and in time a caravel arrived which would take us on our final leg back to Spain, and for De Landa, the Tribunal.
2697 words












XXI
Book the twenty-first
CHAPTER HOUSE
Wherein Bishop Diego De Landa and I arrive in the Chapter House in Spain and work on his defense before the tribunal of the Council of the Indies



CHAPTER HOUSE
What with stops at ports along the way, we were on that accursed ship for five weeks. It felt like several lifetimes, and it was days before I was able to feel that the earth was not shifting under my feet, and I was more seasick on land than I had been when we were sailing.
But then there was Diego’s return to the Chapter House. It was a hard homecoming for the proud De Landa, returning there in disgrace, under the cloud of the Council of the Indies.
De Landa gave the Provincial an abrazo. It was mostly a formality. It had been many years since a younger Diego De Landa had been at the Chapter House on the sun-scorched Spanish plain, and he and this Provincial had not been friends even when they had been acolytes together.
When he had set sail for Nueva España years before, everyone at the house had been happy to see De Landa leave, and they were less than pleased to see him return. But they had no choice.
De Landa had been summoned by the Council of the Indies to answer the charges that had been brought by the Bishop Toral, also a Franciscan with ties to this selfsame Chapter House.
They had all trained there together, but at different times, and the present Provincial knew that Toral still had friends and supporters in the house, whereas De Landa had none.
In point of actual fact, De Landa had never had friends at the Chapter House. He had never been the type to make friends. Exceptionally studious and aloof, he was not part of the ordinary horseplay of the acolytes and they responded in kind.
The Brothers-in-residence could be expected to be civil but cool to De Landa, but that was not to be helped now. They had their duty, and they would do it. He had always been a zealot, and now it had gotten him into trouble. It was not for the likes of these Acolytes and Brothers-in Residence to judge him, that was what The Council of The Indies was for.
It was not that De Landa was friendless in Spain, or even in the Chapter House for that matter, for he knew that Licenciado Tomás López was also back from Mexico City to this same Chapter House, and that he would help.
"Diego! Como estas, mi amigo?" the well-fed Tomás jumped up from his desk and put down his cup of wine, as his secretary Luis showed a bedraggled Diego De Landa into his office. Followed by me.
"Bien, bien, Tomás. Y tu?" The abrazo between the two was warm and heartfelt. They had long been compadres and brothers in spirit in the Yucatan.
“ And who is this that you have brought us, Diego?” said the short round man with the bright red face that seemed perpetually wreathed in smiles.
“Ah, Tomàs, this is one of our great successes, Jaime Paulus Ik. Once a great fighter for the Indios, he is now a fighter for Our Lord, and a great friend and comfort to me.”
Licenciado Tomàs extended a hand for me to shake in the Spanish fashion, and the coldly glittering eyes, curiously out of place in that pleasant face, apprised me in an instant, before he turned away to once again address De Landa.
"I am sorry for all this, Diego. The Council just do not understand. They sit here in their comfortable villas in Spain, sipping wine and eating with their fat wives, and they think to judge those who stand on the front lines for Our Lord.”
“Ah, but you will sit on the Tribunal, will you not, Tomàs? Surely this will be in my favor, especially since it is you who promulgated the Ordinances under which we served.”
“Yes, Diego, although it was difficult to get them to agree to my sitting. The only way I was able to finally convince them was to tell them that it would be unfair not to have someone who had actually served in that accursed place and knew of the conditions there. But, mind you, they are aware that we know each other.”
“Know each other? Why you are more precious to me than would be my own father, who I never knew.”
The Licenciado shook his head. “I know, Diego. I know. It is that damned Bartolomé de Las Casas. He did this. He has got all of them thinking that the Indians are people like us. There have no understanding that the Indios are but children who need us to show them the way." With this he glanced my way, but I kept my face impassive, as he expected.
“Will De Las Casas be a member of this Tribunal?” asked De Landa.
“I know not, my son. He would be if it were not for his age, but he is infirm, and I do not know if it is possible. But whether he is sitting there or no, Diego, his spirit will loom large over the proceedings.”
“He was not there with us, Tomàs. My Indios are like unruly children that need the firm hand of a loving parent lest the children fall by the wayside. What would they have us do? Did they really want us to let the children rule the house? Did they not see that was how it was before we came to the land, did they not see the sacrifices, the cruelty, the idolatry? Look you to my friend Jaime; is he not an example?”
They both looked to me expecting my silent agreement, but inside I wanted to shout about the magnificence of the Empires that we had built before we had ever heard of these pompous, self-satisfied Spanish. True, our civilization was different to theirs, but it was ours, and they destroyed it trying to change it wholly into theirs.
But I was in their country, in their Chapter House and I knew they would brook no dissension, so I merely nodded, and they returned to their self-aggrandizing colloquy.
It was De Landa who resumed his outrage that he had been called to account. "The Ordinances were necessary, we all knew it. Why can't they see it?"
A placating Tomàs tried to pour oil on De Landa’s troubled waters. "It was a different time, Diego. That was then. This is now. They would judge you under the rules of the Spain of today, but Spain is not the Yucatan, and what may be good for Spain is not for the Yucatan. And many of these have never been to the Indies. They do not know... and they do not care."
"But all that we did was under the Ordinances."
"Do I not know, Diego? Was it not I who made those Ordinances when I was Judge at the Audiencia?"
"Have you not seen? They are saying that you made the Ordinances at our request."
"Well, yes, but who knew better than you? Certainly I sought your opinion. Who else should I have asked, the fat scholars in Spain? You were living among the Indios, who was better to ask? And it matters little, Diego; the Ordinances were the Ordinances, they were legal, they were the law and you were perfectly within your rights to follow them to the letter. Not only the letter, but the spirit."
"We needed the power,Tomàs. We could see how it was going. The Indios were headstrong and obstinate, and if we had not been able to compel them to Our Lord, we would have lost them back to the old ways."
"Yes, yes, we know all that, Diego. You and I were there and we could see that an iron hand was the only answer, but what we must do is convince these hard-headed fools who think they know better than we who had to deal with them each day.”
A humbled De Landa Looked almost contrite for just a moment. Almost.
Licenciado Tomàs rose and went to the door to open it for a young, cherubic-looking Padre. “But now my old friend, we must speak of your defense. To help us I have brought here the good Padre Hernando Velasquez. He is well versed in the lore of our good friend, de Las Casas, and I have brought him here as a kind of Abogado del Diablo, our Devil’s Advocate. Sit, good Padre Hernando. Did you bring a copy of the Ordinances for us to use?"
The rotund young Padre placed a document on the table around which they were seated.

The Ordinances of Tomas Lopez
Of the Royal Audience of the Confines, promulgated in 1552
In exercise of the power of our Emperor, vested in me, I command you, the caciques, chief men, and people, as follows:
I. No cacique shall be absent from his town, save for temporal or spiritual good, or as called by the padres, for over 50 days, on pain of loss of office.
II. The Indians must not live off in the forests, but come into the town together, in good strong houses, under pain of whipping or prison.
III. To avoid difficulties in doctrination, no Indian shall change from one town to another without permission of the local Spanish authorities.
IV. Since many of the chiefs and older men, in respect they hold by their ancient descent, call the people into secret meetings to teach their old rites and draw them from the Christian doctrine, in their weakness of understanding, all such actions and meetings are prohibited.
V. The caciques shall not hold gatherings, nor go about at night, after the bells are sounded for the souls in purgatory.
VI. Every cacique or chief of a town shall carry in mind the list of all the people. Every man absenting himself from his town for over 30 or 40 days, save in public service or with the padres, even with the permission of his cacique, shall be punished by 100 blows and 100 days in prison.
VII. Every town, within two years, must have a good church, and one only, to which all may come. Nor may any cacique build any other church than the one, under pain of 100 blows.
VIII. Every town shall have schools where the Indians shall be taught the necessity of baptism, without which no one can enjoy God. The schools shall be built by the town, and the caciques shall compel them thereto, in the form and manner required by the padres, at places designated by them.
IX. On the days for doctrination, one shall go through the towns, bearing a cross and cloth, to call all people together, where all shall gather in order, those of each town by themselves.
X. If any one, having heard the holy word and left his false doctrines, shall return to these, he shall be imprisoned to await the due punishment to be ordered by the Royal Audiencia.
XI. No Indian shall undertake by himself to preach the holy word save by express license of the religious fathers.
XII. No baptised person shall possess idols, sacrifice any animals, draw blood by piercing their ears or noses, nor perform any rite, nor burn incense thereto, or fast in worship of their false idols.
XIII. No Indian baptised, shall return to be baptised a second time.
XIV. Many Indians having been told that their children will die if baptised, I command that all children be brought for baptism.
XV. Matrimony being in great respect among the Indians, I ordain that no one shall have more than one wife, and that an adulterer shall receive 100 blows, and other punishments if he does not amend.
XVI. No cacique shall have to do with a female slave.
XVII. No one shall be so daring as to marry secretly.
XVIII. No one shall marry twice, on penalty of branding with a hot iron in a figure 4 on the forehead.
XIX. No purchase gifts shall be made to the woman's parents, nor shall the youth be required by them, as by their old customs, to remain and serve in their father-in-law's house for two or three years.
XX. No one shall give a heathen name to his children.
XXI. All persons must bend the knee before the sacrament, recite the prayers fixed when the Ave is rung, and reverence the cross and images.
XXII. Every one, man and woman, must go to the church both morning and evening, and say an Ave and a Paternoster with all reverence.
XXIII. At meals all shall say grace before and after, and on retiring at night cross themselves and recite the prayers the fathers will teach them.
XXIV. No one shall cast grains of corn for divination, nor tell dreams, nor wear any marks or ornaments of their heathendom, nor tattoo themselves.
XXV. So lacking in charity and care even for their wives and husbands, or family, are the Indians, that I command all shall care for them when they are sick, etc.
XXVI. Where much sickness comes to a town, it shall be reported, and the fathers shall have those at hand for instruction in holy dying.
XXVII. All inheritances shall be properly cared for.
XXVIII. There shall be no holding in slavery, and all so held shall be set free. But I allow to the caciques, principal men or other powerful Indians to hire people for their service, all of whom shall be reported to the padres and taken to them for doctrination.
XXIX. The custom of banquets to large numbers is so common, and so destructive of Christianity, that I order no general banquets be given by any one save at marriages or like fiestas, but then no more than a dozen people may be invited.
XXX. No dances shall be held except in daytime.
XXXI. God gave us time for work, and time for his service; whereby I order the keeping of all church fiestas, as and in the manner fixed by the religious fathers.
XXXII. All preparation of their ancient drinks is prohibited, and the caciques, principal men, and even the ecomenderos are ordered within two months to gather and burn all utensils or cups used therein, on penalty of 50 pesos fine if they allow more to be made.
XXXII. Towns must be in the Spanish fashion, have guest-houses, one for Spaniards and another for Indians. Also marketplaces to avoid all traveling about to sell or buy. Nor shall any merchant, Indian, Mexican, Mestizo or Negro, be lodged in any private house.
XXXIII. Proper weights and measures shall be provided within two months, on penalty of twenty pesos gold.
XXXIV. I command the raising of cattle to be introduced among the Indians.
XXXV. The chief tribute of the country being cotton mantles, I order that teaching for this be given.
XXXVI. I order that all women wear long skirts and over them their huipiles; and that all men wear shirts and go shod, at least with sandals.
XXXVII. Since the Indians are always wandering the woods to hunt, I order that all bows and arrows are to be burned. But each cacique shall hold two or three dozen bows, with arrows, for special occasions, or necessity against tigers.
XXXVIII. Good roads from town to town shall be kept in order.
XXXIX. No negro, slave or mestizo shall enter any village save with his master, and then stay more than a day and night.

"Hmmm," muttered the young Padre as he pored over the document. "Most of this is no problem. The complainants to the Council of the Indies protest only of the torture and death of the Indians. They also say that there was no authority to invoke the Inquisition, and they question the Auto."
Tomás aggressively jabbed with his finger at the sheet of Ordinances. "Look at numero diez," he argued to the young Padre. "The wording is clear and specific. If any one, having heard the holy word and left his false doctrines, shall return to these, he shall be imprisoned to await the due punishment to be ordered by the Real Audiencia."
"Perdoname, Licenciado, it may be that such allows for the arrest and imprisonment of the denunciado, the denounced one, but as you can see, there is no provision for punishment by the Friars in their towns. Punishment clearly requires that the Audiencia alone has the responsibility. That could well be the issue."
De Landa became defensive. "Let us, for the moment, leave aside this supposedly difficult question of punishment, if we look to what is required before the question of punishment ever arises, that section leaves to the Friars the question of culpability. We are clearly charged with investigation to dislodge the heretic. Certainly we are allowed reasonable methods to extract confessions? How else were we to determine the question of who should be held to await the pleasure of the Audiencia?"
"Phaaa!" exclaimed Tomás. "These fools know nothing of how it was with us back then. They say to us that it was only 10 years ago that my Ordinances were made, and how much could things have changed so much since then? They look at the relatively peaceful Yucatan today and think that it was the same then.”
De Landa’s face came alight. “Yes, Tomás, they do not understand, we had to be Conquistadores for souls!”
Tomás pointed an accusing finger at the young cleric-lawyer. ”How do they think it came to be peaceful? They were not there. It was a different world. A completely different world. It was not until a mere 20 years ago that the country was sufficiently pacified to even allow the arrival of the Franciscans in this country, though there were still many dangers, and in truth, there was no semblance of real peace in the Yucatan until less than 15 years ago.”
Padre Hernando Velasquez actually pushed his chair back under the onslaught.

Licenciado Tomás waxed pontifical, pleased with his logic. “This peace that they talk of, this peace was the result of my Ordinances, and the loving way that our Friars applied them.”
"Ah, but there was peace." responded Padre Hernando. "So then what was the reason for this torture and killing of Indians… after there was this peace?"
"Torture and killing?" Roared Tomás. "What do you youngsters know of torture and killing. Do you want to talk about who did torture and killing? Why do you not talk of our brave Conquistadores?”
Hernando looked puzzled. “Conquistadores? What do the actions of the Friars have to do with Conquistadores?”
Tomás came back with, “What do Conquistadores have to do with this question? Oh, so you do not see it, do you? The Conquistadores are heroes no matter what depredations they were guilty of, but the good Friars who are charged to convert the heathen, when they are called upon to use justifiably use harsh methods, they are called barbaric!" His face was engorged with blood and his anger suffused the room.
"Calmate, Licenciado, calmate." Responded the young friar, while Diego allowed the older man to carry his banner and I looked on at this mock battle that seemed more real by the moment. "Why do we speak here of the Conquistadores? I still do not understand what have they to do with the good Friar here?"
Tomás had regained control of himself, but he was no less passionate and now became steely. "Just how do you latecomers think that the Conquistadores pacified the Yucatan?. Think you that they did it with love and understanding? The only way the Conquistadores could take the land and hold it was through fire and the sword. Their tortures and killings were meant to terrorize the Indios. They were not about converting the heathen to Our Lord. They were here for land and riches. They conquered an entire country!"
"But Don Tomás, even admitting your dates, that was still 15 years ago."
"Oh, my boy. 15 years are as nothing. Even now, the Padres are so few and the Indios are so many. We hold that land only by controls of iron. It is the only way we brave few can hold the countryside. We dare not allow the old ways to regain power because the Indians would have the organization and the will to drive us from the land, as once they drove out Montejo the elder. We hold the land in the palm of a strong right hand, and if we should falter for even one minute, we would be swept from the Yucatan as seeds upon the wind."
The young Padre had faltered in his role of Abogado del Diablo, but now he brightened and said, “Momento, senores, I had forgotten. The Council also charges the burning of the villages. What say you?
It was De Landa who spoke up, and his voice was filled with contempt. “These fools question the burning of the villages, do they? And just how did they think that we could have gotten the Indians to gather around the monasteries?”
He leaned over the table and pointed at the document again. “Here, look at this:
II. The Indians must not live off in the forests, but come into the town together, in good strong houses, under pain of whipping or prison.
III. To avoid difficulties in doctrination, no Indian shall change from one town to another without permission of the local Spanish authorities.
‘Just how were we to enforce such orders? Of course we burned the villages. If we had not, the stupid Indians would only have returned to them, like foxes to their den. It was to follow the Ordinances that we burned the villages. And the burning was necessary to enforce the other Ordinances as well, for how were we to see whether there was obedience if we did not bring them close to us?”
The young Padre Hernando Velasquez ruminated for a moment and then responded, “Yes, that should suffice for the burning. but let us move on to the question of the usurpation of the mantle of the Inquisition and the instituting of the Auto-da-fé. How do you say that all this can be justified?”
Again it was De Landa who spoke, and he spoke calmly and with great authority, as if the subject had long been on his mind, as indeed it had. “Padre Hernando, you overreach yourself, as has the Tribunal. There was no ‘usurpation’, as they call it. There was no bishop who was available to us for the exercise of ecclesiastical duties, and so we took unto ourselves the Plenary Authority, the Autoridad Omnimoda, to exercise those duties in distant places, as has always been the custom.”
The young Padre exhuded wisdom and scholarship as he opined, “Yes, that is so, there is much authority in tradition. It has often been so that there had to be a religious leader before there was a formal appointment, and the leading Religious took on the task. I see no difference here.
Satisfied on that point, De Landa continued on his path. “And have we forgotten that it was the Judge of the Audiencia himself, the good Licenciado Tomás,” here the old Padre smiled, “who gave us the Ordinances, and who also gave us a decree allowing the friars to act in the place of the Bishop, so as to enforce the Bulls, even to have the aid of public officials in punishing cases. We were given the ‘Keys of Peter’, and as such, we acted to protect the faith. Is that not true, Tomás?”
The plump Licenciado laced his fingers over his paunch and proclaimed, pontifically, “All is as you say, Diego.”
Drawing a sheet of parchment from his own leather folder, De Landa laid it on the table for the others to read, and continued, “Not only that, but what of the authority of the Papal Bull before we even went to the Yucatan, which clearly set forth that: under pain of excommunication by sentence carried, latae sententiae, no apostate shall presume to go to the Indies, so that the Indians be not infected and perverted by bad examples. The bishops shall see to it that all such apostates are expelled from their dioceses, that they may not deprave and deceive souls tender in the faith…What of that, my good young Padre Hernando?”
But Hernando was not to be routed so easily. “Wait a moment, my good Brother De Landa. That Bull was sent forth for the protection of the Indians, while you would use it for prosecution. It was meant as a shield, not a sword.
De Landa waved his hand negligently. “No matter what it was meant for, it is, and I am allowed, nay, required to follow it, and follow it I did.”
Hernando stood as Horatius at the Bridge as he declaimed from the depths of his scholarship, “Then too there is the principal that the Indians themselves were not subject to the Inquisition by reason of being ‘infants in the faith’, just as children.
“Hah!” Exclaimed De Landa. ‘Infants in the faith’ indeed. Rather they were the worms destroying the apple. They were no more ‘infants in the faith’ than those they were misleading. Would you have had us leave the apostates in the midst of our good Indios?”
It was easy to see that the young Padre was running down before the concerted onslaught of the two older Padres, yet he gamely soldiered on. “But Brother De Landa, the Bull that you would quote as justification is the very thing that has brought you to Spain to appear before the Council!”
De Landa sat back in his chair, the leather creaking at his movement. “Yes, yes, Padre Hernando, I understand all that, but can they ignore the words? Were these heretics not apostates under the Bull? Were they not depraved and deceiving souls even though tender in the faith? Were we not enjoined to root them out, excommunicate them, relax them over to the civil authority for carrying out of the sentence of death? If that was our authority, then whatever we did that was lesser, was that not also authorized?”
The young Padre finally grunted in exasperation. “Brother, you should have been a Canon Lawyer, for your arguments do truly question the number of angels who may dance on the head of a pin.”
De Landa laughed. “This is my life, Padre Hernando, and on this and my labors for the faith, do I stand.”
“But wait,” started Padre Hernandez. What of the proclamation, signed by the Bishops of Mexico, as well as representatives of all the Orders...” At this he glanced pointedly at De Landa. “... that expressly ordered that in acting under plenary authority, the friars could not use whipping and flogging to enforce obedience to the church, or, in matters of faith. What of that, good Brother, since you claim Plenary Authority, how do you avoid the injunction not to use whipping and flogging?”
De Landa shrugged. “I readily admit that what you say has merit, but what can be taken away by the church, can later be given again. That conference was superseded in Nueva España by the Ordinances of the Audiencia, as will be attested to by the estimable Tomás Lopez, who promulgated those Ordinances, together with its provisions for punishment. Tomás, is that not true?”
The older Licenciado now looked a little uncomfortable, but replied, “It is as you say, Diego. Such was necessary for the preservation of the faith, for without the faith, what was there to hold us in Nueva España?”
Diego de Landa turned to Hernando to say, “ Is there not a sufficiency for what we have done in the matters of faith. Surely, while it can be said that we were zealous in our efforts, it cannot be said that we acted without proper authority, for it was the Audiencia itself which gave us that authority. Surely, the present pacific state of the Yucatan gives adequate testimony that what we have done is necessary.
Padre Hernando Velasquez had fallen silent and ruminative. He was thinking that it was likely more due to the quick and judicious alleviations of Bishop Toral which contributed to the fragile peace in the Yucatan, than to the methods of De Landa, but the Padre kept himself to himself. Besides, the argument could certainly be made along those lines, and De Landa was entitled to make such presentations to the Council if he wished. These arguments might even work, particularly since Padre Tomás was a member of the Tribunal and could argue from the inside.
The discussion seemed to be at an end, and it was Padre Tomás who allowed that since there were no other matters which might be attended to, that the young Padre was excused with thanks.
Once he had left, Tomás and De Landa sat down to drink wine and talk of old times in the Yucatan, while I sat in a chair by the wall. I was not invited to join in their party.
4889 words


XXII
BOOK THE TWENTY-SECOND
APOSTLE TO THE INDIES

In which Diego De Landa and I meet Bishop Bartolome de las Casas and discuss differing points of view


APOSTLE TO THE INDIES & PROTECTOR OF THE INDIANS

THE WATCHERS ON THE BANKS

I knew well of Bishop Bartolome de Las Casas. Most of the Indios did. He was like a savior to us. He believed in us, and fought for us. Maybe he was not all that successful, but he was a warrior for us, and not against us.
We knew his story. Every part of it. Would we not? This one who loved us, and in return we loved him.
His history was well known to us. It was told by mothers to their children and whispered at campfires in the forest fastness.
Oh yes, we knew him.
Bartolome de Las Casas was a Saint with feet of clay, but then maybe all saints have feet of clay - maybe that's what makes them saints.
Born in 1474 near Seville, he was the son of a man who had accompanied Columbus on his second voyage. Originally educated as a lawyer, he came to Hispaniola to make his fortune with Velasquez in 1511 and was then ordained as a simple parish priest in 1512.
At that time, priests were allowed stewardship of plantations, and he received an encomienda with its allotment of Indian slaves, but by 1514, he had become convinced that the forced labor of the Indians was an unmitigated evil, both to the Indians and to the Spanish.
In spite of a widespread opinion that he had become mad, he was an early troublemaker, and became so convinced of the immorality of the practice of slavery that he gave up his plantation and surrendered his allotment of slaves.
Such actions were completely unheard of, almost treasonous, yet he was so set in his belief that he gave up everything and returned to Spain to do his best to change the policies of the Spanish government toward the Indians. It had taken him all of his 40 years to finally found his calling, and he went at it with a will.
What can be said of those who see the path untrod and determine to explore it with all that is in them? Are they fools? Are they madmen? Are they the righteous? Are they the conscience of mankind? Are they the voice of civilization? Maybe all are true, and maybe none.
For some unknown reason they choose to breast the tides of ordinary life, to oppose the thinking of everyone else and go their own way.
Maybe time is a river going no one knows where. Most people are only watchers on the banks, while the movers and shakers of the world, and there are few enough of them, are out there in the rapids, and swimming for all they are worth. Diving in. Battling the current and even other swimmers.
Some drown.
Some wave to the watchers.
Some just swim a few strokes, think better of it, and crawl back up on the bank.
Some just swim with little regard for any but themselves. Swimming with little purpose but their own.
Some are swimming for all they are worth, and their swim is full of noise and froth, but it is short.
Some try to enlist others in an effort to dam the river.
Then there are the long-distance swimmers who conserve their effort and are smooth. They swim for a very long time.
The question is; why do they swim at all? Why not stay on the bank with the others, dry and comfortable?
Who knows?
Once in Spain he made himself enough of a nuisance that he was appointed to a position on The Commission on the Indies, an appointment almost unheard of for an untried lawyer and a failed parish priest.
It could only have been because he pestered so many people that he finally hit on someone who either agreed with him, or just wanted to get rid of him. In a Commission staffed with the legal, mercantile and conservative lights of Spain, he landed like a firebrand in a haystack.
The Commission was only formed as a sop to those do-gooders who had raised concerns about the Indians of the Antilles and Hispaniola. This was at a time when most of them were already perishing because of the slavery and the sicknesses. Certainly the Commission was never created to interfere with the treatment of what were generally considered less than human savages.
De las Casas was early outraged and dissatisfied with the half measures that they were recommending, and he actually resigned his sinecure where all he had to do was go along and keep his mouth shut.
He did not walk out quietly, for now he knew that there were at least the threads of a movement to do something about the Indians.
He continued his incessant agitation at the Royal Court and through every person who would listen to him, until finally in 1521 he was given a grant to attempt to establish a peaceful colony in Venezuela under Christian principles.
1521. The same year Cortes finally took Tenochtitlan; this crazy parish priest was stranded along the coast in a totally wild Venezuela where all that existed that was civilized was a nearby Dominican Monastery. It was clearly expected that the savages would quickly massacre this inexperienced idealist. God only knows why he was not, but he actually did succeed in setting up a community.
While it had some initial successes, the novelty of the madman soon wore off and after two years, the Indians forced him to seek refuge in a Dominican monastery, and he joined their Order in 1523. At least he was no longer a mere parish priest with no formal connections. He was now a black-robed Dominican and he spent 12 years there in Santo Domingo, writing the books that would begin to raise consciousness throughout the Spanish world, the relatively mild and well-reasoned A History of the Indies, and Apologetic History.
In 1535, at the age of 61, a greatly advanced age for the time, his dedication to his mission among the Indians and his continuing agitation, was rewarded when he was given a grant to establish a peaceful colony among the Kekchi Indians in northern Nicaragua and Guatemala, the Peten region.
It would be thought that he would have learned from his experience in Venezuela, but that occurrence had only served to reinforce his certainty that he now knew how to do it.
His Superiors sent him into the wildest country imaginable with inhabitants who had already refused Spanish 'pacification'. In other words, they had battled the soldiers and driven them off. So here was an unarmed Dominican Brother come to establish a community using Christian principles.
They do say that God protects fools and drunkards, and Fray Bartolome did not drink. Once again, De Las Casas defied fate, settled in and became a friend and a leader to the Kekchi.
His little colony became famous and a model for others that were set up one after another. His own community was so successful that the grant to the Dominicans was extended for another 10 years. The colony of Fray Bartolome de las Casas was different in one major way. The Fray thought that he had discovered what the problem was, and at his insistence, the secular Spanish were excluded from the area of the grant!
This was an innovation, and one that was not welcomed within the heavily mercantile society that was Spain. Everything possible was done to undermine Fray De las Casas and his achievement. And the efforts to sabotage him were not limited to the merchants of Spain, but also extended to their allies, paid and otherwise, among the Religious and the bureaucrats of the Crown.
Within two years, in 1537, the Pope responded to the reports of the successful new colonies as well as the now-incessant drumbeat of moral outrage that originated with De las Casas and his growing legions of followers.
For the first time, a totally unexpected Papal Bull was issued to the effect that the Indians were really and truly men and capable of receiving the Christian faith.
This struck as a bombshell throughout the Indies. It struck at the heart of the new wealth of the Indies. Since much of the easy gold and silver had already gone to Spain, Nueva España’s wealth was now in what it could produce, and the production required slaves; masses of slaves. The wealth of Nueva España was now measured in slaves, and the highest authority of the Religious had just abolished slavery among the Indians!
The country was in an uproar. This was not the first time that the ‘Grandees’ of Nueva España had considered declaring independence from Spain; but it was the first time that it was not just a few malcontents who were so inclined, now the movement was widespread.
It was now established by the Pope that the Indians were officially people, and not animals without souls or children incapable of understanding.
And the Papal Bull also said that as yet, because they had not had time to be mature in the faith, these people were incapable of evil.
This was both good and bad. Good for the Indios and bad for the encomienderos.
How could a people who were incapable of evil be punished? What would they be punished for? How could they be controlled? The ideal of Christian Love had been tried before in other places and had generally led to massacres of the priests.
Fictions arose quickly in the lands of Nueva España that allowed the effective continuation of despotic slavery for the Indians, and things went on much as before, and the Papal Bull was honored mainly in the breach.
By 1540, Fray Bartolome had left his beloved Kekchi and returned to Spain.
His continuous and forceful agitation was instrumental in the passage of the New Laws in 1542, which provided stringent rules and set forth treatment of the Indians. These New Laws resulted in a vicious conflict between the landowners and the priests. Still the cruelty continued.
Appointed Bishop of Chiapas in 1544 at a still-vigorous 70 years of age, his uncompromising attitude soon brought him a plethora of landowning enemies. He was no stranger to the area for it was located near to where his Kekchi colony was located. It was a fortuitous appointment in that the area was the hotbed of the battle of landowners vs. priests regarding the treatment of the Indios.
His new post was a fiery forge where his Cathedral was located in the notorious town of Villa Real, a fortified outpost that had been called Villa Viciosa as the headquarters of the Spanish troops that aided the landowners in their brutal suppression of the Indios.
Arrayed against him were the united forces of the landowners, the representatives of the Spanish Crown, the bureaucrats, and even the majority of the Religious hierarchy.
Faced with the mounting landowner intransigence to
his implacable defense of the Indians, Bartolome soon became known derisively as the ‘Apostle of the Indians’, but they finally defeated him and he resigned after alienating the civil and economic elite.
He returned to Spain in 1547, where, in 1550 and 1551, Bartolome de las Casas, still espousing that the Indios were people and entitled to humane treatment, engaged in a series of famous debates with his chief adversary, Juan Gines de Sepulveda, an academic.
Sepulveda held, regardless of the Papal Bull, that the Indian cruelties (he had never visited the Indies) were, in themselves, enough to justify an all-out war on the Indios, and that any brutality and mercilessness was allowable.
The majority of Spaniards supported Sepulveda.
De las Casas’ disgust at his failure to win the minds of the Spaniards led him to write his diatribe against his Spanish countrymen called A Very Brief History of the Destruction of the Indies. After considerable difficulty, it was finally published in 1552 when De Las Casas was 78 years of age.
Much of it was lies, but maybe it could have been be excused by the frustration of De Las Casas. He had tried moral suasion; he had written carefully reasoned treatises; he had shown by the example of his Kekchi colony, he had toiled in the vineyards of his vision for almost 48 years, and had achieved little except to earn the hatred of large sections of his fellow Spaniards.
A Very Brief History… was something completely different, part fact, part fiction, all sensationalized; it was a wildly exaggerated account of the cruelty of the Spanish, which De Las Casas felt was the cause of all the evil in the colonies.
While initially given little credence at home, it was highly flammable fuel for the ruthless competition for domination between the two world powers of the time, Catholic Spain and Protestant England; a competition which reached its peak with the destruction, in 1588, of the Spanish Armada, sent to invade England.
This little book was the foundation of the Black Legend, La Leyenda Negra, which forever blackened the name of the Spain, and was an invaluable propaganda tool in the hands of the English.

1563
And now I was here, with De Landa, walking into a meeting with a man that I had never thought to see.
It was the summer of 1563 and Spain was blisteringly hot that year. Even in the huge old house in Seville with the thick walls that had been borrowed for the meeting.
The old man seemed lost in the huge maroon velvet gown sat alone in the room, hunched over on his dark oak chair with the red velvet insets. The chair had a high back, too high for the small, neat figure of the 90-year-old man. Incongruously, long poles were attached to the sides of the chair to enable it to be carried, and two copper-skinned, obviously Indian stalwarts stood back against a wall like statues.
The room was large and tile floored. Dark oak dining-room furniture was comfortably arrayed, and the polished surfaces reflected the myriad candles of the chandelier, lit in spite of the brilliant sunlight streaming in the windows past the red velvet curtains. The ceiling was high and oak-beamed, while huge
paintings of pastoral landscapes decorated the cream stucco walls.
‘Old’ did not adequately describe the man, ancient was better. His face was hawklike with still-glittering eyes and a prominent beak. Leather like dry skin was stretched to the point of creasing over birdlike bones. He was mostly balding with a thin white fringe haloing his head.
The younger man was shown into the room and he entered with a confident stride. I was content to be in the same room with a legend, and elected to stand by the door, to be a fly on the wall for what was to come. The older man looked up appraisingly and said only, "Senor."
They looked alike, these two. Both small, spare and balding, both hawk-faced, although it could be said that the younger man looked more like a vulture than a hawk, but possibly that was only a function of age. The younger
man went over to the older and bowed in respect. "It is my honor, Senor."
The old man stared up at him. "You are the one I have heard so much about," he said bluntly.
"I am doubly honored that you have heard of me honored Sir."
"You assume that what I have heard is good."
The younger man colored slightly. "Possibly I should introduce myself, since we have not been formally introduced."
"The old man waved a hand dismissively. "It is not necessary, Fray De Landa, I am contented to have this opportunity for us to talk, and you already know who I am."
Diego de Landa was disconcerted by the use of the word 'contented,' but only replied, "Who does not know of the life and dedication of the famous Bishop Bartolome de las Casas, the 'Apostle of the Indies'."
Once again the dismissive wave of the hand from Fray Bartolome. He continued in a serious tone. "Please, Senor. Flowery speeches have no place between us. I have asked for this meeting to try to understand what a Man of God was doing to my children in the Yucatan. And please pull over one
of the chairs and sit. I do not appreciate having to twist my old neck to stare up at you. As you can see, my poor old body is folding up on itself."
The young Brother sat back in the chair he had brought from its place at the table. "There is no secret, I was bringing them closer to God, your Eminence."
"Ah, De Landa, it is times like this that I regret the loss of use of my legs, for I yearn to stride up and down and yell at your stupidity. As it is, I can only sit here like the old man that I am and ask you if you have learned nothing from what I have been saying all of these many years."
Tenting his fingers and then hiding behind them, De Landa cleared his throat and began. "Eminence, I have heard all that you have to say, but that does not mean I have to agree with it. You call the Indians your children, but with all respect, they are not yours, but rather God's, and when they fall away, it is for us, the Men of God to bring them to heel."
"Good God, man! Bring them to heel? What are they then to you? Are these then dogs, that they must 'heel'?"
"Only a mere figure of speech, Eminence," De Landa exclaimed mildly. Not dogs, more as lambs that must be brought back to the fold so as to be protected from the wolves," he shook a finger at the old man, "and you well know how many wolves are there waiting for our poor lambs."
"Yes, Diego, and I think I am looking at one."
De Landa protested vigorously. "Not so, Eminence. I am a shepherd, not a wolf. I am the protector against the wolves."
"And were those the wolves that you burned at your Auto-da-fe?"
"Most assuredly, Eminence. The filthy heretics, those apostate, they would surely have led the flock back to the devil."
"De Landa, De Landa," the Bishop shook his head sadly. I do not understand you, my son, and I wonder whether it is that you can understand yourself."
"Eminence?"
"How many did you burn, Diego? How many did you kill? How many were broken in body and spirit in your zeal?"
"Only those as I had to, Eminence." Brother De Landa sat very straight and very still... and very stiff in his chair.
"You burned my children, Diego." Fray Bartolome said sadly.
"No, no, Your Eminence. I burned only those who had strayed so far that they would not come back. We tried Eminence! Really we tried! We burned only those who refused our help."
"Help, you call it, Diego? Help? Of what help was the rocks put on their feet? Was it help to fill their bellies with water to bursting and then have some fat Brother jump on them until they puked blood? Damn you, man, I have read the complaints to the Council of the Indies. Think you to remain obdurate before the Council?"
"Pardon, Bishop, but to me it is not obdurate to insist on the right. We did nothing that God did not want. He spoke through us to the heathen."
The old man fairly roared. "God told you to burn those men? God told you to torture and kill, to burn villages and destroy the history of a people? Is that what God told you to do? What God? Surely it wasn't my merciful Jesus who told you to do these things." He looked at De Landa steadily, staring at him out of bird-bright eyes, his cheeks flushed with anger. "Tell me, Diego, what God have you been listening to?"
De Landa was flustered. He was not used to being talked to thus, and he was at a loss to explain his philosophy and theology to one who had already made up his mind. Diego spoke placatingly, still respectful of the famous old man who sat before him. "Eminence, why do you treat me so? We are both Men of God. It is just that we have chosen different paths."
"Your path is not to God, it is to the Devil, de Landa. The Indians are but children in the faith, and you would burn them as hoary sinners. Can you not see the difference? Cannot your God make this plain to you?"
Never a patient man to begin with, Diego de Landa had exhausted his store of tolerance. "He hunched himself forward in unconscious imitation of the Bishop. Angry now, he began to tell his truths. "Eminence, I was there, in the jungle with these. I looked into their eyes. I saw their dreadful works. Above all we needed obedience without their barbaric questioning. If we had
Let it go on, they would all have returned to the old ways and away from Our Jesus! Examples were necessary or they would have torn our hearts from our living bodies! These children, as you call them, practiced blood sacrifices! Idolatry! What else could we have done?"
“You could have practiced a little Christian Charity, my son.”
“Think you then, that these heathens are human?”
“Oh, De Landa, I though I had made it clear through my debates with that cur, Sepulveda. Of course they are human, and I have proof!”
“Proof, your Eminence? What proof can there ever be?”
“The best proof, De Landa, for I have seen them laugh. Have you not seen them laugh?”
“So?”
“Laugh, De Landa, your heathens laugh.”
“I do not understand, Eminence.”
“Let the scales fall from your eyes, Diego. They laugh. Man is the only animal that laughs. Have you ever seen a bird laugh? Or a fish? Or a flower? A jaguar? A pig? Anything other than a Man? They laugh, Diego, they Laugh.”
“And this is your proof, Eminence? That they laugh? Monkeys laugh, Eminence.”
“No, Diego, monkeys only chatter. They see no humor. Only man laughs, and your Indios laugh.”
“Are you then mad, Eminence? That you would base your whole life on laughter? Is there nothing else you can tell me, no visions of Our Lord imparting wisdom? Maybe Our Lady? No? Then I can not accept such proof, it is too little.”
"Calm yourself, Diego. We here must reason together. Think you that your Indians were different than mine?"
"Maybe, Bishop, maybe. Is it not true that on your first grant, the one in Venezuela, you were so peaceful and loving that you were forced to hide in a Dominican monastery to escape from your very charges who would have killed you?"
"Diego, the memory pains me, yet, there is some truth in it. It was more than forty years ago, and I was unsure in my faith and in my methods. I would do it differently today, as I did in my time in Guatemala among the Kekchi, only 15 years later. Even my first small community was not a failure if it was an education, my son; but you should not count the supposed failures without also counting the successes. I spent some 33 years among my children. I hope I have learned something in that time. Can you not learn from me? From my failures and my successes?" The Bishop was almost pleading.
De Landa was unmoved. "Eminence, my own time among the heathen was short, only a mere 13 years, yet I was never chased to a monastery, and the seeds that I planted bear fruit even today."
"Ah, but in spite of what you think of as your successes, it would seem wise for you to gird your loins against the coming storm."
"Eminence, there is little need for fear, Our Lord will decide which way this thing against me shall go, and there is little that I can do that will make anyone say 'yea' or 'nay'."
"Can you not show a little humility, my son?"
De Landa laughed, a rude barking noise. "Pardon me, Eminence, but it amuses me that you should speak to me of humility. You are well known as possibly the most stiff-necked man in all of Spain and the colonies. You, who have stood up and battled Kings, Emperors and Popes, even our whole country. You speak to me of humility?"
"Ah, but I was always on the side of mercy and justice."
"And I. Your Eminence, have always sided with God. I have as much right to be stiff-necked as you, and damn the nay-sayers."
"Will you pray with me, my son?"
"Pray with you, Eminence? But you say that we are on different paths, which path shall we pray for?"
"We pray for what a man on a path always needs. Guidance, my son, guidance.”
4206 words




XXIII
BOOK THE TWENTY-THIRD
REQUERIMENTO
In which is examined the vicissitudes of fate as applied to the Natives and the Spanish


REQUERIMENTO

One of the black-clad panel asked, “Pray, how do you account for what the Spanish did here?”
“What question do you ask here, good Sir? Is it that you ask how could they? Or is it that you ask how did they?”
The vulture Priest scowled and shot back, “We will thank you not to bandy words with us, fellow. You know well that we ask how you account for the marvelous success we Spanish have visited upon Mexico.”
I knew well the answer, all right, but knew less how it should be worded so that I might keep my head on my shoulders at least a short while longer.
I now knew that if there were any question about the intentions of the Spanish toward what they called Nueva España, it would have been put to rest by the Requerimento, if it had been told to them in a language they were able to understand.
On landing, the brave Conquistadores were required by the 1513 proclamation of the Spanish King, Ferdinand, to tell the natives that if they didn’t recognize the church, the penalties would be severe:
“We will enter your lands and make slaves of your wives and children…. We will do all the harm and damage that we can…to vassals who do not obey and refuse to receive their lord…are your fault and not that of…the knights who come with us.”
It might have had more effect if it had been pronounced in a language that the Natives were able to understand.
Even looked at from any logical point of view there are questions. First the Spanish say that the lands belong to the Indians, but then it calls them vassals, or servants of King Ferdinand, and says if they don’t obey him, then whatever happens is their own fault! An astonishing document to say the least, but there is no issue as to the truthfulness of the Spanish, because all that they promised to do – they did.
The first 17 Europeans (that we were aware of) came to the Yucatan as the result of a shipwreck in 1511. Only two survived when the rest were either sacrificed or died of disease. Lay Brother Geronimo de Aguilar and seaman Gonzalo Guerrero became slaves of the Maya. Aguilar was rescued by Cortes some years later, while Guerrero rose to be a war chief who successfully drove of several Spanish attempts to land. He alone knew what the Requerimento meant even before Cortes reached the mainland to destroy the Aztec Empire.
Any of the news or warnings of the strange apparitions that appeared off our shores, or even of the white strangers that had come into our possession were ignored as of little moment, and probably delusions brought on by an excess of pulque.
What should have been the true relationship between the mighty Conquistadores and los Indios is made clear by a short history of what later happened in Tayasal, the last stronghold of the Maya.
The first recorded visit was many years before when Cortes, with a large force, had passed by and left an injured horse. When it died, the Indians carved its image in stone and worshipped it as a god.
Soon after that, a Spanish priest, outraged at the worship of a stone horse, tried to smash it and was rewarded by being chased away in a canoe being stoned by the Maya.
The next visit was recorded by a Maya lay brother educated in a Franciscan monastery who came to the island fastness in the company of only two Spanish priests.
This visit took a great deal of intestinal fortitude on the part of the priests and their Maya acolyte, because the last visitors, a priest and 90 Indians, had all been sacrificed at the hour set for the Mass. Maybe it was a tribute to the faith of the visitors in a merciful and loving God, but maybe it was also sheer stupidity.
There came from the direction of the rising sun a great wedge of canoes, all of them adorned with many flowers and playing much music with sticks and with drums and with wooden flutes. Seated in one larger than all, was the king of the Itzás, who is Lord Can Ek, which means ‘the star 20 serpent.’
King Can Ek’s golden head was very well adorned with a large crown of pure gold…and he wore his ears covered with gold disks. The disks have hangings that shake and fall over the shoulders like tatters…. They put down a long mat that he could walk on it…. And all the Maya soldiers who got out of the canoes came and positioned themselves along its edge.
These three survived, but one year after they left, Can Ek took the hearts of two Dominicans sent to convert him.
Conversion of the Indians could be an ‘iffy’ business.
It was not as if we were afraid or even unable to fight, because they proved their mettle time and again in ferocious battles with the Spanish where neither side gave quarter. As you lords already know, even today there are many places in the far Yucatan where the Spanish are not welcome even unto this day, and if they go there, often do not come back.
It is well known, even among the Spanish, of the valiant efforts made by Cuatemoc in his fight against the Spanish. He did everything he could to salvage what had been lost by Motecazoma. By means of his spies, he made himself acquainted with the movements of the Spaniards, and their design to besiege the capital. He prepared for it by sending away the useless part of the population, while he called in his potent vassals from the neighborhood, as many as would still come. But they were still vassals, and not truly allies. He strengthened the defenses of the city, reviewed his troops, stimulating them by prizes to excel in their exercises. He made harangues to his soldiers to rouse them to a spirit of desperate resistance.
He encouraged his vassals throughout the empire to attack the white men wherever they were to be met with, setting a price on their heads, as well as the persons of all who should be brought alive to him in Mexico. And it was no uncommon thing for the Spaniards to find hanging up in the temples of the conquered places the arms and accoutrements of their unfortunate countrymen who had been seized and sent to the capital for sacrifice.
It was just too late: Too late to make friends of those who had been enemies: Too late to mend the mistakes of Motecazoma. Too late, too late.
It is difficult to understand. How could it have been possible? Leaving aside the rest of Mexico, what about the Yucatan and the adjoining Guatemala and their over 3,000 years of civilization? The region had more cities than were in ancient Egypt, many hundreds of them. The city of Calakmul alone had a population of 60,000 and almost 7,000 structures. Tikal had 55,000 people and spread over a 50-square-mile metropolitan area.
The first answer, if there ever can be an answer, lies, as it did in mainland Mexico, with the ages-old divisions among The People. The two major ruling families, at least in the lowlands, were the Cocoms, mighty lords of the fabled Mayapan, who called themselves the ‘true’ lords of the Maya, and the Xius, who the Cocoms saw as ‘foreigners’. It was the Xius who aligned themselves with the dzules, as the Spanish were called, as against the Cocoms, even in the face of the repulsive horrors visited on the natives by the Spanish.
In a letter to the Crown, a Franciscan missionary told of the Spanish at Chetumal:
“Tying them to stakes, he cut the breasts off many women, and hands, noses and ears off the men… and he threw the women in the lakes to drown merely to amuse himself. The Indians fled form all this and did not sow their crops, and all died of hunger.”
While it may be hard to imagine that these two groups of natives could have such hatred for each other that they would ally themselves with a complete outsider so as to destroy their enemy, such has always been true between the conquerors and the conquered. The folly of men knows no bounds.
Oh, it is not as if we loved the dzules, as we have called those who came to us from Spain, nor do we love them today. Once the unremitting cruelty of them became clear, the rebellions began. Valladolid came under siege by more than 20,000 Indians fighting your style of war, killing women, children and Christian Indians, and still continues to this day, and will continue forever. You taught us well and will never defeat us, and eventually, after we have learned enough of your kind of hate, you will have to go back to your Spain, and leave us in peace.
“In peace?” One of the panel of the Inquisition said, “When was there ever peace among the Maya?”
“Whatever peace there was, Lord, was our peace. And whatever strife there was between us, was between us, and not with your interference.”
“Interference? You call what we have done here interference? Why, we brought God to your heathen lands. We brought civilization.”
“Your God. Your civilization.”
There was no answer from the panel, and so I continued.
The second answer was the sicknesses that the Spanish brought with them and against which we were helpless.
I did not fully realize what your sicknesses meant to us until I was there at the dying of my beautiful wife, Autumn Sunset.
It was only mildly worrisome at the start. She began with a hurt in her head, which just would not go away, but got worse as the days passed. Then she had trouble with moving her limbs as she began to cry with the pain. She burned as with a fire inside, and after only two or three days the redness came upon her face. Then came the little volcanoes spewing noxious fluids that grew and spread across her face and then quickly spread to her whole body.
Worse than the horror that her beautiful face became, was that the volcanoes started in her eyes, and she could not bear the pain and screamed and wailed day and night. Fluids came from every entrance to her body, until there were no more.
Slowly, ever so slowly, her screams became less until they were like the simple mewling of some newborn animal; the scar that was placed upon my soul, a scar that has never healed even to this day, matched each scar that she bore. It took two weeks for her to die, and there was nothing anyone could do to help her. No prayers to the gods, no sacrifices, no promises, nothing.
And over the next few weeks, most of our village died in the same terrible way. Those who lived, other than me, did so by fleeing into the forest, for those who went to other villages still died, but took those villagers with them.
You could not leave the horror behind; it followed you everywhere.
Oh you perfidious Guapuchines, you lie to us; you lie to yourselves; you lie so much that you do not even know when you are lying! You speak to us and to yourselves of your true mission in Mexico.
When Cortes spoke to his troops before their final march on Tenochtitlan, he rode through the ranks, exhorting his soldiers to be true to themselves, and the enterprise in which they were embarked. He told them, they were to march against rebels, who had once acknowledged allegiance to the Spanish sovereign; against barbarians, the enemies of their religion. They were to fight the battles of the Cross and of the crown; to fight their own battles, to wipe away the stain from their arms, to avenge their injuries, and the loss of the dear companions who had been butchered on the field or on the accursed altar of their sacrifice.
Then came the biggest lie of all, a lie nestled within a tissue of lies. He reminded the army that the conversion of the heathen was the work most acceptable in the eye of the Almighty, and one that will be sure to receive His support. He called on every soldier to regard this as the prime object of the expedition, without which the war would be manifestly unjust, and every acquisition made by it a robbery. The general solemnly protested, that the principal motive which operated in his own bosom, was the desire to wean the natives from their gloomy idolatry, and to impart to them the knowledge of a purer faith; and next, to recover for his master, the emperor, the dominions which of right belong to him.
It was the insatiable Spanish hunger; first for gold, then for silver, finally for slaves. Those were the only motives. All the rest were lies.
How could it have happened? Why did it happen?
Just in the Yucatan alone we had sixteen million people, and with one thing and another, less than two million of us survive. How does your god of mercy justify the annihilation of fourteen million people in his name?
I did not expect and answer and did not get one, and so I continued on.
As to how the Spanish were able to prevail over us, you could not have done it if it were not for the help of our Indians, not only the fighting Indians, but also the traitors were also important. La Malinche was of great help to you, not only with the language, although that was important, but she also was the first to bring Cortes’ attention to the crucial fact that Mexico was only a loose confederation of peoples, all of whom hated each other. It was she who told you of our ways so that you could use them against us.
And such perfidy was not limited to the peoples of the Yucatan for such is the tale of the Prince of Tezcuco. It all came about upon Cortes’ return to Tenochtitlan after what they called la Noche Triste, but which we thought of as something different.
When Cortes and his allies came upon Tezcuco they were welcomed effusively and ensconced in a palace outside the city while the ruler, Conacoa and his people, clear supporters of Tenochtitlan, escaped across the lake to the great city. Cortes called a meeting of the few principal persons still remaining in the city, and by their advice and ostensible election advanced a brother of the late sovereign to the throne, which these worthies obligingly declared vacant.
The Prince, the younger son of the great Nezahualpilli, consented to be baptized and was a willing instrument in the hands of the Spaniards. He soon died of the pox, and was succeeded by another member of the royal house, named Ixtlilxochitl, an eager supporter of the Spanish.
Such is the perfidy of the Guapuchines that they spread a carefully concocted history of the rise to power of what to us was a reviled traitor.
Their story was that there were such alarming prodigies at his birth, such gloomy aspects of the planets, that astrologers, who cast his horoscope, advised his father, Nezahualpilli, to slay the infant because he was destined to unite with the enemies of his country, and overturn its institutions and religion.
But the old monarch supposedly replied that the sons of Quetzalcoatl were to come from the East to take possession of the land; and, if the Almighty had selected this child to co-operate with them in the work, His will be done.
As the boy advanced in years, his mischievous activities spoke ill for his future. At age twelve, he formed a little corps of followers, with whom he practiced the military exercises of his nation, conducting mimic fights and occasionally assaulting the peaceful burghers, and throwing the whole city as well as the palace into uproar and confusion.
Some of his father's ancient counselors, connecting this conduct with the predictions at his birth, saw in it such alarming symptoms, that they repeated the advice of the astrologers, to exterminate the Prince, or surrender the kingdom to anarchy.
When told of this, the juvenile offender, at the head of a party of his young desperadoes, entered the house of the offending counselors, dragged them forth, and administered to them the garrote, - the mode in which capital punishment was inflicted in Tezcuco.
Seized and brought before his father, the boy coolly said, "that he had done no more than he had a right to do. The guilty ministers had deserved their fate, by endeavoring to alienate his father's affections from him, for no other reason than his too great fondness for the profession of arms, the most honorable profession in the state, and the one most worthy of a prince. If they had suffered death, it was no more than they had intended for him."
It is said that Nezahualpilli, found much force in these reasons; and, as he saw nothing low and sordid in the action, but rather the laudable exuberance of a daring spirit, which might lead to great things, and he contented himself with bestowing a grave admonition on the juvenile culprit. As he grew older the young man took an active part in the wars of his country, and when no more than seventeen had won for himself the insignia of a valiant and victorious captain.
On his father's death, he disputed the succession with his elder brother, and the kingdom was menaced with a civil war, avoided only when his brother ceded to him that portion of his territories, which lay among the mountains.
On the arrival of the Spaniards, the young chieftain-scarcely twenty years of age-made many friendly demonstrations towards them, induced, no doubt, by his hatred of Motecazoma, who had supported the older brother. It was not, however, till his advancement to the lordship of Tezcuco, that he showed the full extent of his good will. From that hour, he became the fast friend of the Christians, supporting them with his personal authority, and the whole strength of his military array and resources, which, although much shorn of their ancient splendor since the days of his father, were still considerable, and made him a most valuable ally. He richly deserves the melancholy glory of having contributed more than any other chieftain of Cemanahuac to rivet the chains round the necks of his countrymen.
Such were the lies and prevarications of the Spanish intended to prove your right to do your will with us.
So you want to know to what you should owe your marvelous success in our land? Do you really think this was such a marvelous success?
3187 words




.




XXIV
BOOK THE TWENTY-FOURTH
THE DREAD OF DE LANDA
In which My Lord De Landa experiences second thoughts for the first time.


DE LANDA’S DREAD

As the day approached for his hearing before the Tribunal as set by The Council of The Indies, I could see that My Lord De Landa was troubled in his soul. It was the first time I had ever seen him troubled by doubt. Anger had always been his refuge in times of trouble, and in those times he had the tendency to lash out at his tormentors.
Not so this time, for now his tormentor was himself, for Fray Diego De Landa, Provincial of Izamal and sometimes self-appointed Bishop of the Yucatan was a man at war with himself. Since I had come to know him he had been a cleric first, and then a scholar-investigator, but the curious intellectual within had always been in evidence, and lately had been pushing to the fore, in conflict with the cleric.
In Mexico, where I had first known him, he had always been a rock in his faith, a granite boulder for his faith, upon which the waves of the ungodly would be dashed. Thus his steadfast destruction of all things Maya, which he perceived as an affront to his faith.
However, his roots were in scholarship of the language and culture of the Maya with which he had been engrossed when he first came to Mexico as a young friar at age 25. Somehow his growing bureaucratic aspirations had suppressed his academic bent, and now that he was out from under the day-to-day diocesan operations, his intellectual curiosity had again surfaced, along with doubts as to some of the things that he had done while in his bureaucratic mode.
Was he feeling guilty? Maybe guilt was too strong a word; rather he was conflicted and looking for certitude in a place where he was intellectually weak. Just maybe the reality that he was going to face those selfsame questions before the Tribunal had triggered his attempt to rationalize his activities in Mexico.
The outrage that had emerged in Spain was not so much faith-based, as more based in scholarship, and the opportunities for study that were being daily destroyed in Nueva España.
“It is a war, Jaime! They do not understand that it is a war. They would separate out the religious from the secular, but that is not possible in the atmosphere that is Mexico. We won the secular war, but if we do not also win the religious war, then we must eventually lose the secular one as well. It is only through the Church that we few Spanish can control the vast populace that is Mexico.”
“But Padre, with respect, why is it the Spanish that must control? Why cannot it be a partnership between us? He’s right! We don’t want them or their filthy religion. They would take from us all that is ours and replace everything with what is theirs. “After all, Padre, we have been there since the beginning and we need a place in our own land.”
“Jaime, Jaime. Still you do not see. You, who have come so far, and yet you still do not see. I am mortified at my own failure. We Have spent so much profitable time together, yet you do not understand, and yet, just a short time ago, when we were on the ship coming here…”
“That was over a year ago, My Lord, and I have had much time to think since then. Again, with the utmost respect that I have for you, I must ask, was there nothing that was of worth in what was found?” I mean that everything there is of more worth than the filth and the lies that I have already seen too much of here in Spain.
“It was of the devil, Jaime! The very devil himself! All of it was filthy and perverted; it came from sacrifice, from blood and bleeding hearts! Is that not clear?” His voice was rising, always a sign that he was not quite sure of himself. He always got louder and his voice higher at those times while a throbbing vein bulged from his forehead.
“Padre,” I began slowly, “We have been in Spain for more than a year and during that time I have had the opportunity to see much of your country. I cannot see that it is better than mine own. I have seen your Madrid and your Toledo. Are they bigger than Tenochtitlan? No. Do they hold more people than Tenochtitlan? No. Are they fairer than Tenochtitlan with its lakes and canals, its crystal-clear water; its flowers; its wonderful monuments and great plazas? No, they are not. Are your cities cleaner, or more colorful than Tenochtitlan, with its feathered banners and brilliant stucco walls? You know they are not.”
“Your monuments ran red with the blood of sacrifices,” he said sullenly.
“Yes, My Lord, we sacrificed. It is as you say, but what of your many churches where your people worship a sacrificed, bleeding Jesus? Is your sacrifice better than our sacrifices? You too drink of the blood and eat of the flesh of your sacrifice. Why do you think it has been so easy for my people to accept your suffering Jesus dying for our sins. He was but another victim of your own ‘Flower Wars.’
De Landa’s eyes were red-rimmed and deep-set as he glared at me. “Careful, Jaime. You go too far. Tilting at windmills is all right between us two, but if others hear of your sentiments…”
“I grovel before you, My Lord. I do but try to set those arguments against you that you might hear in the sanctified chambers of the Tribunal. I do but aid you in your preparation, but if you do not want my poor assistance, I would gladly hold apart from what I know to be blasphemy. It is that there might be judges appointed to the Tribunal by the Council of the Indies that might well hold with the heretical utterings of Bartolome de Las Casas, and it would be better if you were prepared for such assaults.”
“I do not understand your countrymen My Lord De Landa, you are all so complicated, and so aggressive, and you… how shall I say this… do not seem to like each other overmuch.”
De Landa laughed uneasily. “What is it that you are trying to say, Jaime?”
“Well, It sometimes seems that everyone who comes to us from Spain is some kind of lawyer, someone who argues over everything and who is always ready to fight, and what is worse, they have infected the Indios with this terrible disease and many of our people have become almost like lawyers as well.”
“You peak of a particular kind of person, Jaime. It is not only ‘lawyers’ as you call them, it is bureaucrats, as we call them.”
“What is it… these ‘bureaucrats’?
“Jaime, in your society, everyone has a place and is taught to be satisfied and accepting of that place. Not so the Spanish. None of us are ever satisfied with our place; we seek power over our fellows. We are always striving to get to a better place, a higher place in our society. That is what you see.”
“But there is so much of it, My Lord De Landa. I have been… ‘Privileged’?… to be present at this time and to see some of what has happened in my land, and it does seem to me that the Conquest of Nueva España by the Conquistadores was only the start of the battle. The continuing struggle goes on until this very day and I can see no end to it in the future. “
“I am truly amazed, my dear Jaime. You have put your finger on it. The big problem of Spain in Nueva España is indeed the lawyers, but they are only the beginning of it, they are the seeds, and the flowers that grow from those seeds are poisonous indeed.”
“So why did your king send these poisonous things to our country? Once you Spanish tired of fighting the Indios, you immediately turned on each other in your fight over the spoils of the conquest”
“By my eyes, I do not know, Jaime. He didn’t there at the beginning, and these lawyers were so hated by Cortes that he had the king promise not to allow lawyers to come to your Nueva España. Nevertheless, alas, it did not last, for they are as sewer bugs that insinuate themselves everywhere, and since many of the Padres or the Frays were also lawyers, there was no way to keep them out. It is little known, but Cortes himself studied the law at the University of Salamanca before going adventuring. In the end, the lawyers laid him low. What he feared most soon came to pass, and he had no more hand in the governance of what he himself had conquered against all odds. He could conquer as against hundreds of thousands, but just a few lawyers were enough to defeat him.”
“But once they were there My Lord, they did cause so much trouble.”
“It is what the lawyers do, Jaime. As it is said, one lawyer alone would starve to death, but two lawyers, one against the other, can become richer than any Conquistador.”
“But they find so many ways to cause strife, My Lord.”
“It may be that you do not know it, but lawyers are why we are here today.”
“How so, My Lord De Landa?”
“At the start, it began with the Council of the Indies having the final legal authority over all cases that originated in Nueva España; but that was only at the start. Then came the lawyers with their weasel words, and what was legal and what was ecclesiastical became questionable, and as in Spain, the problem multiplied.”
“Multiplied how, Lord?”
“Where once there had been only one court where matters could be heard, soon there were many courts and systems of what you call justice. Not only were there the Ecclesiastical and Secular courts, but there was also the separate system of The Inquisition, and how under some circumstances, Indian courts might also get involved. It all became a question of jurisdiction, because with jurisdiction came the power to control the resources and the people.”
“But you say that is how we came to be here and I do not see that.”
“Jaime, it is said that we are here for my Auto da fé, that I had no authority to do such a thing, that such was for a Bishop, yet they know that is false and that I was acting properly as we discussed with Padre Tomàs. That is not truly what we are here for, my dear Jaime, is you.”
“I, My Lord? What has this to do with me?”
“Not you alone, Jaime. It is the question of the Indians and whether you and your fellows are human or animal.” This last he said with a grim smirk upon his face.
After what you and your Spanish have done, that you can call us animals? I thought, but I said only, “I am confused, My Lord, how can this be a question?”
“Oh but it is, my dear Jaime, and it is important because of the slave trade and the value of the Indians as labor, for the Indians are the new gold of the Indies.”
“I still do not understand My Lord De Landa, what has that to do with you? Izamal has no slaves, and while my Indios labor for the Church, they are paid a fair wage and are not beaten overly.”
“Still not the point, Jaime, for while they work for the Church, and they attend Instruction, and Mass, and Festivals, and Saint’s Days, they are not available to work for the ecomienderos in their fields. In addition, they did not want their Indians punished, or raised up beyond work in the fields, for all this affected the profits of the ecomienderos. It is for this that we are here. Even here we labor for your souls, Jaime, for if you have souls, then you are of the Church, but if you are savages without souls, then you are property that the ecomienderos might do with as they choose. That is why we are really here.”
“But what of the destruction of the works of the Maya, the monuments, and the idols, and even the codices?”
“It is only noise, my dear Jaime, a distraction for academics, nothing more. Let me ask you, when all the golden articles of the Aztecs were melted down to send to the Spanish Crown, did you hear such an outcry then? They would not dare, but when we talk about things about which the Crown cares not, the monuments, the idols, the books that no man can read, then these are what the mice may fight over without disturbing the cat.”
“Then what can we do, My Lord?”
“We must trust in God, and also in Padre Tomàs, who will be one of the seven Judges of this Tribunal. Here, Jaime, we will see the true war of Nueva España, the war of God and gold. The Church and the secular, and who shall control the future of your country. If I am guilty, Jaime, then the Church is guilty, and we will thenceforth be but parish priests in your land. The Church cannot allow that this happen.”
“Then what do we do, My Lord?”
“That is why you are here with me, my dear Jaime. Until the time for the Tribunal has come, you and I will sit and I will return to my first love, the scholarship of the Maya, and we will write of all that has been lost, and thus satisfy the foolish academics who believe that this trial will be about them.”
“Then…”
“It is time to begin our great work, Jaime, you and I.
2351 words

XXV
BOOK THE TWENTY-FIFTH
RELACION
In which I tell why we wrote Relacion de los Cosas and what it meant to the defense of Fray De Landa and for me







RELACION

…And so we began the work that has come to define Fray Diego de Landa’s life more than any other event, and was to be his legacy to the ages. His fame, or more, his infamy, came from what the world thought was the result of his Auto da fé, the destruction of five thousand idols and 27 codices. Even until this day, the world believes that the smashed idols and the burned codices were all authentic. It has never been discovered that most of them were false and that someday, when these wretched Spanish have all gone back to their cursed land, they will come back to us.
The world moans the loss of the books of our history, astronomy, sciences, mathematics, medicine, literature and all the arts. Are you all so foolish as to really believe that all we had were twenty-seven books?
Much of what we had was destroyed, but if there had been 10 times as many Spaniards, no, a hundred times as many, they still would not have been able to destroy all. All anyone would have had to do is to look around at the many, many wall paintings and sculptures to see the level of our arts; can anyone really think that we had only twenty-seven codices?
I would never have told Frey De Landa of our trick while he was alive, and enough time has now passed that you will never find what we have hidden until the time comes for us to reveal it.
Torture? Threats of death? They mean nothing as against our heritage. Who of us would give up our children for the sake of our lives, and by giving up our heritage we would not only be giving up our children, but our children’s children forever. Would you give us rewards for betrayal? Who would sell their children?
That being said, I was witness to something that I had never thought to see. As we began our great work, I saw Frey Diego de Landa change in ways I had never believed possible.
We began The History of the Yucatan Before and After the Conquest, cynically, thinking to take advantage of our opportunity to influence the Tribunal of the Council of the Indies, or at least the academics on it. We knew that the Tribunal had seven members, all learned and renowned men. Padre Tomàs we knew was a staunch supporter, and he was joined by one other who would be at our side no matter what. Then there were the two who we knew were perfervid acolytes of what De Landa thought of as the heretic Bishop, Bartolome de las Casas, and those would be against us until the end. But finally there were the three academics, and it would be upon them that our attention must focus, for the burden would rest firmly on their shoulders.
It was to these three that our Relacion was to speak.

EPIPHANY
So when we began, it was with a jaundiced eye and a cynical view, but taken from his day-to-day bureaucratic and ecclesiastical chores to once again be buried in scholarship, De Landa’s rigid bureaucratic armor crumbled and the squirming curiosity of the eager young scholar he had once been emerged.
He had always had a serious scholarly interest in our history and our people, as shown by his early epigraphical works, and now he was able to again follow his bent.
He had a searching inquisitive hunger that was mostly satisfied by my answers to his questions. Aside from his first times in the Yucatan, De Landa had occupied his time and his mind with a view toward turning my people away from their culture and their religion. To that end he had closed his vistas to what we had to offer. If he was to destroy all, he had to ignore any value that his quest uncovered.
Now his approach changed completely and he now seemed to realize that there were nuggets of wisdom and insight that could be gained from a study of our ways, that might have even outweigh the gold that his countrymen sought. These were all things he discovered only because he had been brought up short by the charges before The Council of The Indies.
In some ways, his trial became more than just a trial of legal issues, it was soon transformed into an internal matter and a growing horror and a great sadness at all he had ignored while he chased after power.
Day after day we spoke, often long into the night, while he explored the many threads his mind sought. Never had he had been able to speak to one of us as an equal, as a person who had knowledge to impart, and he drank as a thirsty man from the well.
In all modesty, Great Lords, almost all of what is in Relacion came from my lips, from my mind, from my experiences over many years. As one of The People, I knew what Fray De Landa could never know, and what I told is what you read.
In those days of inquiry and writing is the epiphany of My Lord De Landa, for from our cynical beginning there arose that flame of scholarship that ignited his soul, and from the ashes of our destroyer arose a passionate defender and advocate, eager to return to the Yucatan. This time he wanted to go to truly take up our cause before the onslaught of the secular and ecclesiastical onslaughts of his own people.
It became obvious in his manner and his speech that this was a real belief, even a real obsession that could not be denied. The search and the writings that were begun to convince others, at the end convinced De Landa, and allowed him to convince others. It could not be faked. It could not be contrived. It had to be true.

BARTOLOME DE LAS CASAS
And the test was Bartolome de las Casas. Once again we came to the coolness of that old house in Seville, to the dark oak, the cool tiles and the red velvet hangings, and to that shriveled figure already shaking hands with death. No more were the Indian stalwarts standing by to move him about in his carry-chair. This time we were ushered into his bedroom filled with the smell of death and decay. He lay within the huge pillared and canopied oak bed as if already displayed on his death catafalque. He was now a raisin of a man, yet still his faded eyes seemed aware even though they were almost milk-white.
He spoke with the halting voice of an aged frog. “Who is here?” and the effort sent him into a painful paroxysm of coughing, but when I thought that he needed help and De Landa said, “Eminence,” the coughing stopped and waved his hand as if to keep us away.
De Landa stopped in the doorway. “It is I, Eminence, Diego de Landa, here to speak to you more: and I have brought a friend with me. May I introduce him to you?”
“So De Landa, you have returned?” It was more in the form of a question, as if the questioner was not sure, but again the fit of coughing and the impatient wave of the hand.
“With a friend, Eminence, I have with me Jaime Paulus Ik, a Mayan who has accompanied me here from Nueva España.”
“You have brought an Indian here to me?”
“A friend, Eminence.”
The wrinkled face wrinkled further in a weak smile. “Will wonders never cease? I welcome you, Jaime, my son, I had not thought to see one of my children here in Spain.” More coughing.
I hardly knew what to say, for I felt that I was intruding on a very private conversation with a very sick man. “It is my honor, Eminence. You are much revered among my people as our protector and defender.”
“Oh Jaime, I have been a very poor protector and defender, for it sometimes seems as if I had never been, while my children are sore beset.”
I wanted to reassure him and praise his efforts. “You have done more than any one man could ever have been expected to do, Eminence.”
His mind wandered from me back to De Landa. “So, Diego, why is it that you have returned?” This time the cough wracked the tiny body and De las Casas wiped his lips with a large white cloth splotched with blood. “I had not thought to see you again.”
De Landa approached the bed. “I had to, Eminence.”
“Had to? What do you mean, had to?” His rattling intake of breath could be heard all the way across the room.
“The last time, when I was here before, I left before we had finished our conversation.” De Landa spoke with a sadness and humility that had long been lacking in this man.
“As I recall, my son, we had chosen to go different ways.”
“That was then, Eminence, before we had further discourse.”
“Further discourse, my son?” He passed a spotted hand over the furrows in his forehead and I could see a glistening red drop of blood on his lips. “…It may be that my mind is fading… but I do not seem to recall…”
“You spoke to me in my mind, Eminence. You shouted. You argued. You debated with thrusts and jabs, and it is only just now that I have been able to hear. I had to come here to tell you that.”
The old man cried. The tears coursed down his cheeks. There were no sobs or chokings, no coughing, only a slight quaver in his voice. “You have come to the light, my son?”
“I have changed, Eminence,” De Landa affirmed. They are people like us, neither better nor worse, with the faults and qualities that we all have.”
“Thank God, my son. I had thought you to be my failure, and I rebuked myself mightily once you had gone.”
De Landa smiled. “I was gone, Eminence, but you followed and would not let me go.”
“There is still the Tribunal, Diego…. What will you do there?” There was another convulsion and what were almost barks punctuated his question.
“I will try to speak from my heart, Eminence. I will tell of my sorrow and my crimes. I will prostrate myself, but it is not the Tribunal that I beg forgiveness of, it is God. It is he I have offended, and his Son, for much of what I did was in their name. I have offended them.”
De las Casas’ speech had an almost liquid bubbling quality as he struggled with the terrible cough that was always there waiting. “And what would you do with this forgiveness, Diego?”
“My only wish is to return to my flock, Eminence. To live among them and to die among them. To finally gain their forgiveness, and to strive mightily to save what can still be saved of their culture.”
“Do you finally understand what is to be saved?”
“The people and their culture, for they are my people as well, and their culture is our culture. We are all one in the sight of God.”
“How did this happen, Diego? Do you even know?”
“Like the biblical Paul, Eminence, the scales fell from my eyes. I had not been able to see beyond my fear. The numbers overwhelmed me. There are so few Spanish and so many Indians, and I could not see past that until I came to the realization that there is no us and no them unless we make it so. I had to see them as people before I could change.”
He shuddered as he coughed, and his speech became broken. “I can see that, my son…, and I know that the Tribunal… will see it as well. You may know that… I still have some little influence there, and I may be able… to help.”
De Landa looked stricken. “Eminence!” he cried. “I did not come to you with that in mind…”
“I know you did not…, my son, and if I thought that is what was… in your mind, I would do nothing for you… but I do not… listen to your mind, and I cannot see… your face, but I do hear your heart, and that… is enough for me.”
There began such a terrible convulsion of coughing that the barks sounded and echoed throughout the house, and minions appeared as if from the very walls, rushing in to minister to a man obviously clinging to life by the slimmest of threads, and at the same time waving us away and pushing us out the door.
We left the coolness of that great dim house and stepped out into the brilliance and the heat of a day in Seville.
It mattered little the reason that De Landa had gone to that house, for on that day Bartolome de las Casas lapsed into a deep coma from which he was not expected to recover.
I now realize that the humbling of Fray Diego de Landa before Bishop de las Casas could very well have spelled the end of the matter still before The Council of The Indies. I know that could have been the result had that ancient figure chosen to speak on behalf of De Landa. However, such was not to be, and with no proof or witnesses of Bishop de las Casas’ change of support to De Landa’s side, we were back where we started; with three members of the Tribunal against De Landa, only one for him, and three members leaning away from him on cultural and human relations grounds.
Relacion would have to do much of his speaking for him.

THE TRIBUNAL
Ex-provincial Diego de Landa stayed in Spain from 1562 until 1573, eleven years, first in the preliminary hearings before The Council of The Indies and then finally in front of the Franciscan Tribunal of Frey Pedro de Bobadilla, Provincial of Castile, under orders of the King to investigate and perform justice. This worthy convened seven learned persons, including De Landa’s friend and mentor, the licenciate Tomás López. Who had been Auditor in Guatemala as well as Judge in the Yucatan. It could be said that it was under his directives that De Landa was acting in the Yucatan.
The Tribunal had attracted much attention in Spain. It amounted to an exposition of the attitudes towards and on behalf of the Indians, and all knew that it could well dictate the treatment of the Indians for the next fifty years.
The Tribunal was held in the Great Hall of The Council of The Indies. Somehow it had been constructed in the Greek style and was fronted with great Ionian columns and broad steps. The interior of the hall was brilliantly lit by the ceiling height windows reflecting off the many marble surfaces within. The heavy oak and red velvet chairs in this hall were not in rows, but were rather scattered about the floor so that they could be drawn together into family groups to accommodate clusters of the like-minded. Ecclesiastics, Crown courtiers, bureaucrats, merchants, academics, lawyers interested in the process, representatives of the ecomienderos and even those passionately for or against the rights of the people of the Indies.
Hundreds of people attended, some of them returning day after day, all focused on a cleared area in the center of the floor on which was set a huge round table with a narrow pass-through and a hollow center where sat a single stool, which was the place for the witness giving testimony. There he would be the absolute focus of attention and could be questioned by anyone sitting around the table, every questioner being no more than seven feet from the witness. A situation which was no doubt daunting for the witness, and was intended to be.
The parameters of the hearing had been set forth and narrowed by the written pleadings presented by the principal actors. They were the Presidente, Pedro de Bobadilla, the Procurador, who appeared on behalf of The Tribunal, and by Diego De Landa’s Defender, who was by chance Padre and Licenciado Hernando Velasques, a plain-spoken and plain-appearing man who had been present at the spirited Chapter House conference involving Tomás Lopez and Diego de Landa.
The relationships of the parties counted for naught in the deliberations of the Tribunal. The friendships and participations were not secret, they had been disclosed, and disregarded.
Almost immediately it was clear that this hearing was to be a referendum on the treatment of the Indians, and that meant a rehash of the hoary arguments as to whether the Indians were human or animals, and that question needed a resolution of the key issue: do they have souls? Tied to this was the jurisdictional issue as to whether issues regarding Indians were the proper province of the ecclesiastical or the secular courts.
If the Indians were human and had souls there were all sorts of ramifications.
I recognized early on that these arrogant intellectuals were debating whether I was an animal like a deer or one of their filthy vicious dogs!
If I were human, then I was a man like other men, and there were no heights that I could not reach in their world. I could even be a priest or a bishop. I could take control of one of the encomiendos, and if I did, who would be my slaves? Who would work the land? Would I have to enslave blacks from Africa? And what if they were human? More to the point, they could no longer enslave me, and who would work their lands and their mines, all of which used to be mine! Of course I would also then be responsible for my acts, and subject to their laws and their Inquisition.
But if I were an animal, then they could work me to death with impunity, subject me to any cruelty, and I would be property, able to be bought and sold, kept in herds, bred and my children taken from me, but I would not be subject to their laws, but also could not avail myself of their protections.
There were no clear-cut divisions as to who were supporters and who were opponents. Generally, the ecclesiastics were in favor of the Indian’s humanity, while the representatives of the ecomienderos and their supporters were against, but there were individuals and even groups that crossed lines.
For instance, some ecclesiastics were against the humanity of the Indians because they could foresee a time when the Indians would jostle Spaniards for places in the priesthood or even the hierarchy, or possibly a time when Indians might be in positions to pass judgment on Spanish ecclesiastics! Their Christian sensitivity didn’t extend quite that far.
The Tribunal arguments went on and on, first supporting one side and then the other, and with each swing the news raced through the cantinas and the plazas of Spain, leaving arguments and fist fights in the wake. Relacion was well received and caused a great stir among the academics. Tomás Lopez made impassioned legalistic arguments for De Landa’s actions, while some in the Tribunal were horrified by the spectre of the Auto da fé. It seemed as if there would never be a resolution as the Tribunal droned on and on for weeks, until a defining event put an end to the squabble.
Bishop Bartolome de las Casas died.
But it was not the fact of his dying, but the how of it.
Everyone knew that he had been in a coma for months and that he had been always on the edge of death, but as the Tribunal raged on late one afternoon, the session was interrupted by a commotion that occurred at one end of the room. While Presidente De Bobadilla of the Tribunal called for order and dispatched his aguaciles-bailiffs- to quiet the demonstration, it turned out that the manifestation was a procession entering into the presence of the Tribunal.
At the head of the procession were two priests holding large silver candlesticks before them, with lit and smoking candles. Behind them swayed an enormous oak canopied bed borne aloft on the shoulders of ten stolid-faced, half-naked Indians followed by some fifty or more ecclesiastics of various ranks and orders chanting prayers.
They moved slowly through the hall’s audience, and arrived before the Tribunal table, where the priests lowered their candles to the floor, while the Indians tenderly lowered the bed. There, almost lost within the vastness of the bed, lay the body of Bishop Bartolome de las Casas, his papery face and still hands were almost as white as his linen. His eyes had been closed by gold doubloons and it was clear that he was dead.
The appearance of a corpse within the august hall of the Tribunal caused a hush to fall over the assemblage as the true meaning of the body struck home. Here was the man whose presence was the very reason for the Tribunal, for without his continued agitation on behalf of his Indians, there would have been no serious voice on their behalf, and in fact, no question of De Landa’s actions.
The Tribunal had heard from Diego De Landa that he regretted his actions and now spoke on behalf of the Indians, but in the light of all that he had done, there were questions as to where the truth lay.
Relacion spoke volumes, but still it was not enough for those who would not listen.
He had even introduced me and I had undergone a full day of the most rigorous questioning, but the question of my humanity was not settled. Some felt that my answers might simply be parroting what I had been told, and there were some who said that while parrots might speak, they were still not human.
But the presence of De Las Casas… ah, De Las Casas. What did he do there? Why did he come? The buzz went through the room. They did not understand. Until De las Casas’ man came forward with the parchment. It was written in a shaky hand; almost illegible; but it was unmistakably the hand of De las Casas. He had written it himself, there right at the end. He had wanted to testify and so they had done as bidden and taken him to the hall, but he had died on the way, a friend to the Indians until the end. A friend to De Landa. He knew it might happen. Knew he might not live to testify, yet he would testify just by his presence. The parchment was there. It was given to the Presidente and De Bobadilla read it aloud. It was very short as De las Casas had been very weak, but it was also very clear. It only read:
De Landa is heir to my work, do with him as you would do with me.
BDLC
3881 words



XXVI
BOOK THE TWENTY-SIXTH
A NEW PATH
After Epiphany

A NEW PATH

The eloquent testament of Bartolome de las Casas effectively ended the Tribunal with the exoneration of De Landa. Not whether or not he was guilty of the charges against him, but rather that his rebirth had been pronounced by his most visible opponent, leaving only the three members of the Tribunal beholden to the encomienderos still opposed, but hopelessly outnumbered and now powerless.
Just because De Landa had experienced a change of mind, didn’t mean that the encomienderos had experienced a change of heart. Their greed would continue to echo down through the ages, but there had been a very slight shift in attitude that had made the humanity of the Indians a little more acceptable, and what more could have been expected?
At least a seed had been planted.
Now that De Landa was out from under the cloud of The Council of The Indies, I waited to see his true face. The imprimatur of De Las Casas had greatly enhanced his stature, and now the hierarchy of the Franciscans were anxious to wave their victory in the face of the encomienderos of Nueva España. What better way than to send the hated and reviled Diego de Landa back to the Yucatan, but this time as a real and qualified Bishop. There were some who balked at such a bold move in light of De Landa’s history, but the irony was too delicious for the Cardinal to let pass, and when Bishop Toral died in 1571, that provided the setting for the triumphant return of Bishop Diego de Landa.
The time of our return in 1573, was coupled with a royal Ceđula mandating the appointment of De Landa as Bishop. Bishop Bartolome de las Casas had at last been officially vindicated seven years after he died, but an official proclamation could not really be expected to change the rapacious habits of the waiting encomienderos, and that was more or less the mission of the new Bishop.
Now raised to the heights of the bureaucracy, I would have expected My Lord Bishop to have reverted to his lofty bureaucratic persona, unencumbered by any concern for the souls of my fellow Indios, so I was waiting for the telltales.
Our triumphant homecoming was much different from our ignominious departure when De Landa was only thankful that he had not been sent to Spain in irons. This time our voyage was accomplished on a giant galleon, accompanied by 30 friars, and the Captain had vacated his own cabin for the use of the Bishop. It was surprising to me that De Landa did not glory in lonely majesty on the trip back, but spent much of the trip in simple sailor’s clothes, without his robe, ministering to the crew and actually making friends among them! On this trip, rather than ignoring the crew, he talked to them at length, asking where they were born, about their families and their aspirations, and they loved it, and him in turn. It was the first time that I had seen My Lord be human and not condescending.
When we arrived at the fortress of Campeche, there was a delegation of Franciscans to greet us on the docks, but the spontaneous formation of a well-wishing gauntlet formed by the crew was more impressive to me. Somehow, the Bishop was no longer ill-a-ease with people and himself, but had come through the fire to emerge comfortable within his own skin. He knew who and what he was and accepted himself with all his faults, and he knew there were many.
Taking a leaf from the book of those first long-ago Franciscans who had humbly walked from Veracruz to Mexico City, Diego shocked the more conservative churchmen by electing to walk from Campeche to take over his new diocese in Merida. This capital city of the Yucatan was not far from the mission that he had founded at Izamal, and where so much had happened that plotted the course of his life. I was still with him, of course, but now more of a friend than as a servant.
So we walked the countryside, trudging dusty roads, De Landa greeting all that we met, and stopping at all the towns and villages to personally acquaint himself with his parish priests and their parishioners.
We had only been absent from the Yucatan for ten years, but we might well have landed in a totally different land, for many changes had taken place since we left. For one thing, the population was now mostly centered in the larger towns and the villages, so there were very few little hamlets such as I had been born in. Then too, the Franciscan padres had clearly usurped the functions and status of the priests of the old gods, and with their rise in position, they had clearly become the community leaders, assuming some of the airs that had been so prominently displayed by their Bishop when he had been there among the people.
As he moved through the landscape he preached more to the priests than the flock. He preached of the Cedula and of Bartolome de las Casas and of the Brotherhood of Man and the Fatherhood of God, but it was hard to tell if any of the priests were listening. Priests tended to think of homilies as being for their congregations rather than for them, but at least De Landa tried. Tried and then moved on.
For me, the journey was distressing because I could see that during the past ten years, the terrible ravages that the plagues had wrought had continued, and where once the land had been crowded with people, now we often passed great swathes and tracts of land empty of people, and returning to jungle and the animals. While we in Spain had been arguing over the humanity of The People, they were disappearing. Now we could see that because there were so few Indians left, the encomienderos had followed the injunction of Bartolome de las Casas, and brought in black slaves from Hispaniola, where they had been brought by Arab traders from Africa, and even from Africa itself, to toil in the broiling sun. Africans lasted longer under the brutal lash of the overseer, and so were much sought after.
When we reached Izamal, we were surprised to see how the mission had grown and how prosperous it seemed to be under the new Provincial. We stayed there several days, and during that time had cause to converse with the Franciscans and to discover that the Indios were more or less pacified, at least in that area of the Yucatan.
In talking with my brethren, it seemed that the ones I saw were more beaten down than pacified. So many had died that the old cofradios, family groups and tribal structures had completely broken down, leaving the Indios completely at the mercy of the priests and of the encomienderos, such mercy often being sadly lacking.
The entire structure of a society had been destroyed, to be replaced by a Spanish matrix, a vineyard upon which it was planned that a new social order might grow.
So much has passed into history and myth that I was surprised to see that the old H’men, the priest-magicians of the old gods, still existed, but more in the nature of custodians of our buried heritage, their true identities known to few, but their duties passed down, father-to-son. I was worried because I could see that the old ways were beginning to take on the character of myths, and I could see that in the future, the true knowledge of the burial places might be lost, but what was the alternative?
I had seen what had happened to our treasures that had fallen into the hands of the Spanish. They had been melted down, smashed or burned, and even those that had survived to be studied and examined by the academics, those had been taken away to Spain. No, better by far that they be lost in our own beloved soil, than uncovered and sent away from us. At least if they were buried here, and the power of the old gods still remained with us, and not lost in some foreign place.
I was sometimes amazed to realize that almost fifty years had passed since Cortes had first landed at Villa Rica. Now that I had been certified as a human being by the Church and by the Crown, I was rewarded by being allowed to become a Lay Brother of the Franciscans and even allowed to assist the Bishop when he conducted the rare High Mass on solemn occasions.
Not only that, but I was also trotted out to be displayed to every visiting dignitary, be he ecclesiastic or secular, and I chatted easily with them while De Landa beamed at his creation, as the worthies gaped in amazement. After one of our performances – for that was what they surely were - one of our guests took De Landa aside to tell him that seeing me serving at the altar was like seeing a monkey play the violin. It didn’t matter whether he played it well or ill, it was only amazing that he played it at all!
Yes, I was taken into the Franciscan Order, it is true. I should have been grateful. I was even being trained and groomed to take Holy Orders. I was to be the very first Indian Priest, so long as I continued to prove myself worthy. All I knew was that they had better hurry, because I was already 78 years of age. Possibly they thought that at my age there was little damage I could still do.
They were wrong.
I could join the H’men, and I did. Traveling under my guise as a Lay Brother I journeyed the Yucatan, presiding over worship of the Old Gods, often in the secret caverns, and making sure that there was always a custodian of the buried artifacts and codices. When I sometimes performed a Mass at some Indian village the people knew that I was really acting for the Old Gods, and I did it to give them hope. To tell them that even if it appeared that the Spanish and their false god seemed to be in control, that the Old Gods were always there, and would care for The People as long as they cared for them.
There were still Caciques – headmen - in the villages, but mostly they were toadies to either the ecclesiastics or the secular leaders within Province, but in most villages, not every village, but most villages, I was able to find the angry young men who seethed under the yoke of the Spanish. Often there would be a particularly cruel encomiendero or a Priest who favored one too many Maya girls or boys with his attentions, and needed to be taught a lesson, and shown that the Guapuchines were no all-powerful.
The encomiendero would soon discover that a herd of cows had died for some unknown reason, or that there would be a fire in among a crop or in some outbuilding on his encomienda. The Priest might find himself waylaid and beaten as he went about his nighttime Parish ‘duties’ to the young maidens or youths.
Slowly, ever so slowly, as I learned which firebrands to trust and which not to trust, I began to gather the dependable ones together in a loose organization, and quietly but forcefully we could exert influence on regions rather than just individual villages or their taskmasters.
In the middle of my machinations, Bishop Diego de Landa died in Merida at the age of 54. He had always been somewhat frail, and his ordeal in Spain had taken much out of him, and so he had only three years in which to enjoy his triumph. However, thinking on it, his life was not so bad, for he was able to see himself at the pinnacle and vindicated, even if it was only for three years. How many ever reach their goal?
It is 1575 My Lords, and I am past my biblically allotted ‘Three Score and Ten’, and am in fact fast approaching four score, so it is time for me to clear my slate, and allow my true self to appear.
There is little that you can do to me that has not already been done. Everybody and everything I love is lost to me now. All the people, my mother and father, my brother, Golden Jade, Aquila and all the Cequi, even Motecazoma. Then too, Autumn Sunset and Dawn Brightness, Heriberto, Bartolome de las Casas, Diego de Landa, all of them are dead and lost to me. Moreover, my home village, the miracle of Tenochtitlan, even T’Ho and all of the many fine, shining monuments, all gone, drowned and buried under all your fine new churches. So what can you do to me?
The Friar-Toad’s lips moved loosely and wetly as he asked me a question.
“What is that you say, Milords?” I asked.
“I asked if you thought that maybe you owed some gratitude to Bishop De Landa for all that he has done for you.”
I laughed shortly and then felt my jaw grow tight. “Gratitude Milords? So you think I should be grateful? I would find it difficult to be grateful to any of the Spanish who invaded and destroyed my land, and brought disease that has killed most of my people while making room for the trash that comes from Spain.”
The Friar-Toad blushed as my scathing tone clearly indicated that he was included in my generalization. Nevertheless, he must be given credit, because he continued reasonably; “But he was your friend, was he not, my son?”
“Friend? No, we were never friends. He used me and I was useful to him, but friends? No, we were never friends.”
The Friar-Colibri now took up the tune; “He took you with him to Spain. Was that not friendship?”
“Hardly, Milords. Think you not that it was to his advantage?”
“How so, my son?”
I bridled. “If it please you Milords. I am not your son and would not be if I could, so it would please me if you would find some other appellation for me, even if it be perjorative.”
I had literally taken his breath away. “You overstep yourself, Indio, do not forget who we are or where you are. Now, exactly how was Bishop De Landa’s taking you to Spain to his advantage?”
“Just so, Milords, you call me Indio because that is what I am. Think you not that it was to De Landa’s advantage to have me with him, parading me about as a friend, when he was to be before a Tribunal centered upon his maltreatment of Indios?”
I could not tell which one made a sound like “Mmmumpf!”
The Vulture-Friar spoke up and his voice was surprisingly rich as he asked, “Did not he talk to you as an equal?”
“Talk to me as an equal, Milords? Think you that I was not an equal? I was an equal, and I was equal all the time that they debated over me and mine as to whether I was human or animal. Has anyone ever treated you as an animal?”
Toad-Friar said, “That was mere intellectual sophistry, Indio, did you not know you were human? Were you so unsure that you needed someone else to tell you?”
“Intellectual sophistry, Milords? Think you that it was intellectual sophistry when my people were gathered into herds like cattle and sold to the highest bidder to work the encomiendras or the mines? What kind of sophistry is that?”
Toad-Friar puffed up as if he were about to croak. “Oh, there may have been some abuses, nobody says there were no abuses, but look you on Mexico now. There is peace where before there were always wars under the Aztecs?”
“Peace, Milords? Think you that what you see is peace. The Guapuchines rule with an iron hand and Mexico is like a tightly-covered kettle boiling. You see only what you wish to see, but I have seen the rest, and I tell you there is no peace, and will be none ‘till you have gone from this place.”
“Jaime, Jaime. Do you still think that we will leave? After more than 50 years? Look around, this country is more Spanish than anything else. How many of what you call your people have mothers or fathers or grandmothers and grandfathers who are Guapuchines, first generation Spanish. Do you not yet understand? We are not leaving because we are now you.”
I looked at them, one after another. They said that I did not understand, but it was they who did not understand. “Those who are born here will always be Mexican. It is the ones who come from Spain to rule over us who must leave us to find our own way.”
Toad-Friar seemed to have become the spokesman, and he also seemed to have become a poisonous toad as he spat at me; “Your own way? You mean like the Aztecs, with ‘Flower Wars’ and sacrifices? You are still like children who need parents and guardians to hold your hands and show you the way…”
“So, Milords, we have graduated from animals to children. If that is so, why is it that some of you Guapuchines study what is left of our ways? What happened to the most beautiful city the world has ever known, our beloved Tenochtitlan? Was it destroyed to show us the way?”
“Yes Jaime, some of us are studying De Landa’s Relacion, is that not a symbol of our caring, a symbol of our Bishop’s caring?”
“Caring, Milords? Relacion was his apologia, his defense before the Tribunal, and why is it so valuable and so important for study? Because it was stolen from me! De Landa only wrote what I told him. His history is mine! The only part that was his was the translation and alphabet of the Maya language, and he was wrong! I told him he was wrong, but he would listen to no one. Everything he did was for his defense in front of the Tribunal. Think you that was caring?”
“Jaime, not only are you a heretic, but you are also coming close to treason against the Crown. You have sworn fealty to our King, and all you do is complain about everything we do or have done.”
“Ah, Milords, how much you are all like My Lord De Landa. How many times we discussed his Auto de fé, but he never could get me to understand what was praiseworthy about smashing the idols and burning the codices. Nor the burning of the corpses, the garroting of the heretics, the torture of the recalcitrant. I know that he was exonerated by the Tribunal, but he has not been exonerated by the dead of Mexico, and he has not been exonerated by me. He is guilty as all of you are guilty, and if you are representatives of your God, then I will stay with mine.”
The echoes continued around the stone room, and then a vast silence fell as the three Priests looked at each other. There must have been some kind of unseen signal, because two bailiffs clad in armor came into the chamber to escort me back to my cell in none to gentle a fashion.
I settled down on the flagstone floor as the solid oaken door slammed shut, producing echoes off the stone walls. The single tiny window whistled with a cold damp wind, the deeply inlet rectangle looking out on the cold gray ocean. The stone cubicle was cold and damp, it’s walls weeping with tears of the sea.
I had disappointed them. They had expected torture, actually looked forward to it. Torture for the Indio who thought he was good enough to be a priest, even if it was only a parish priest and not one of the Holy Orders. At the end, there had been no need. I confessed without urging. Why not? My work was finished. I had fashioned a disparate group of hotheads into a regional band able to work together. These Spanish knew nothing of my efforts against them, only of my worship of the old gods. One of The People, to save himself or one of his own, or for a few coins or scraps of food, had told them of me, and so here I was. It was not their fault, it was the fault of the Spanish who had brought them to this.
I knew it could not go on forever, that I would be caught and brought before the Inquisition. I was the worst of the heretic backsliders, an Indio who had spurned the mercy and largesse of the church. An Indio who had been raised up high and was not thankful. An animal that had bitten the hand that fed him
What had I done that was so evil in their eyes? I had kept alive my culture and my religion, and they considered the two religions to be inimical. They equated my religion with the sacrifices, and in this they were correct, but they will never consider that no matter how many we had sacrificed, they were many fewer than the millions of deaths and the misery that the Spanish had been responsible for.
They will burn me, as they should, for I am their implacable enemy. I hate them. I have always hated them, and I will hate them with every fiber of my being until there is no more time. Do I fear burning? I welcome it, for I will see no more of the destruction of my people, and maybe I will live together with them In Xibalba. The Spanish may occupy this land for a time, but we will return, and the time will come when the great wheel of life will come around, and the Spanish will be gone from this place, and it will once again be ours.
May the time come soon.
3707 words


Chief Joseph's Lament (1879)

Chief Joseph, a noble-featured and humane Nez Percé (Pierced Nose) Indian, refused to be removed from his ancestral lands in Oregon and penned up on a
reservation in Idaho. After an amazing strategic retreat of about a thousand miles, he was finally captured in 1877 near the Canadian border. The miserable remnants of his band were deported to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), where many died of malaria and other afflictions. Chief Joseph appealed personally to the president, and subsequently the Nez Percés were returned to the Pacific Northwest.

At last I was granted permission to come to Washington and bring my friend Yellow Bull and our interpreter with me. I am glad I came. I have shaken hands with a good many friends, but there are some things I want to know which no one seems able to explain. I cannot understand how the government sends a man out to fight us, as it did General Miles, and then breaks his word. Such a government has something wrong about it. . . .

I have heard talk and talk, but nothing is done. Good words do not last long unless they amount to something. Words do not pay for my dead people. They do not pay for my country, now overrun by white men. They do not protect my
father's grave. They do not pay for my horses and cattle.

Good words do not give me back my children. Good words will not make good the promise of your war chief, General Miles. Good words will not give my people good health and stop them from dying. Good words will not get my people a home where they can live in peace and take care of themselves.

I am tired of talk that comes to nothing. It makes my heart sick when I remember all the good words and all the broken promises. There has been too much talking by men who had no right to talk. Too many misinterpretations have been made; too many misunderstandings have come up between the white men and the Indians.

If the white man wants to live in peace with the Indian, he can live in peace. There need be no trouble. Treat all men alike. Give them the same laws. Give them all an even chance to live and grow.

All men are made by the same Great Spirit Chief. They are all brothers. The earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it. You might as well expect all rivers to run backward as that any man who was
born a free man should be contented penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases. If you tie a horse to a stake, do you expect he will grow fat? If you pen an Indian up on a small spot of earth and compel him to stay there, he will
not be contented nor will he grow and prosper.

I have asked some of the Great White Chiefs where they get their authority to say to the Indian that he shall stay in one place, while he sees white men going where they please. They cannot tell me.

I only ask of the government to be treated as all other men are treated. If I cannot go to my own home, let me have a home in a country where my people will not die so fast. I would like to go to Bitter Root Valley [western Montana]. There my people would be healthy; where they are now, they are dying. Three have died since I left my camp to come to Washington. When I think of our condition, my heart is heavy. I see men of my own race treated as outlaws and driven from country to country, or shot down like animals.

I know that my race must change. We cannot hold our own with the white men as we are. We only ask an even chance to live as other men live. We ask to be recognized as men. We ask that the same law shall work alike on all men. If an
Indian breaks the law, punish him by the law. If a white man breaks the law, punish him also.

Let me be a free man--free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade where I choose, free to choose my own teachers, free to follow the religion of my fathers, free to think and talk and act for myself--and I will obey every law or submit to the penalty.

Whenever the white man treats the Indian as they treat each other, then we shall have no more wars. We shall all be alike--brothers of one father and mother, with one sky above us and one country around us and one government for all. Then the Great Spirit Chief who rules above will smile upon this land and send rain to wash out the bloody spots made by brothers' hands upon the face of the earth. For this time the Indian race are waiting and praying. I hope no more groans of wounded men and women will ever go to the ear of the Great Spirit Chief above, and that all people may be one people.
887 words

Labels:

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home