Aztec Rage (32 page)

His jaw dropped. “You speak French?”

“C'est en forgeant qu'on devient forgeron.”
One must forge over and over again to become a blacksmith. In other words, one must work hard at a trade to succeed at it.

Carlos started to jabber in French but quickly stopped as the driver looked back. Carlos's look to me said that we shouldn't flaunt our knowledge of French while Napoleon occupied most of Spain.

“If you had a teacher, who taught you French, you must know about the
Encyclopédie
,” Carlos said.

“
Encyclopédie
?”

“A word from the Greek, it means ‘general education.' It's an attempt to compile all the knowledge known to man in one set of books—in a single encyclopedia. It was prepared in France before we were born.” His voice had dropped to an eager whisper. “But encyclopedias have existed since Speusippus; a nephew of Plato, compiled the knowledge of his day. In Roman times both Pliny the Elder and Gaius Julius Solinus created such works, but Spain has yet to even attempt a modern compendium of knowledge. We've long been under the iron heel of repressive kings and religious dogma.”

Carlos grabbed my arm. “Juan, there's no reason why other countries should be ahead of us in producing encyclopedias. Spaniards have made many contributions to the compilation of knowledge. St. Isidore, the archbishop of Seville, as far back as the seventh century, founded schools in each diocese that taught the arts, medicine, law, and science. He wrote the
Etymologies
, an encyclopedic compilation of the knowledge of his day. His history of the Goths is still the prime source on that ancient culture.
That was over a thousand years ago!

“Other Spaniards have made major contributions. Juan Vives's
De disciplinis
taught the great thinkers that were to come the practice of inductive reasoning. Does it surprise you that he fled Spain with the hounds of the Inquisition snapping at his heels?”

Carlos shook his head and grimaced. “Pedro Mexía and Fray Benito Jerónimo Feijoo, both denounced to the Inquisition. Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos wrote from an Inquisition prison. Pablo de Olavide, Juan Meléndez Valdéz, Sor Juana here in the colony—they all lived in mortal fear of the Inquisition. Would it surprise you if I told you that the
Encyclopédie
itself, composed by d'Alembert and Diderot, was banned by the Inquisition?”

I muttered something I hoped would sound sympathetic. Frankly, after finding out that I was a changeling and plunging from gachupine heaven into lépero hell in a matter of hours, nothing surprised me.

Shaking with righteous fervor, Carlos took deep breaths to get his breathing under control. “Do you understand now why news of the Aztec books so devastated me.”

“Did I miss something?” I asked, still not sure why he had become incensed when he was denied access to the manuscripts.

“The monsignor lied. They've destroyed the manuscripts. Just as Bishop Zumárraga and Landa set out to destroy all vestiges of the indio civilizations of the New World after the Conquest, those fools at the bishop's library have destroyed the manuscripts left in their custody. They destroyed
them because they feared the writings; they feared the writings because they didn't understand them. Do you know why they didn't understand what the indios said? Because they never deciphered the writings.

“Do you realize what harm religious zealots like Zumárraga have done? The consequences of their acts? The Aztec culture prior to the Conquest was a mature civilization, a society advanced in government, commerce, medicine, and sciences. They had books, just as we do, even though their writing was different from ours. They studied the sun and moon and stars and composed a calendar more accurate than the one we use. They had medicines that actually healed, not the rat dung that so many of our ignorant doctors prescribe.

“Our priestly zealots set out to destroy every vestige of the indio culture in order to replace it with their own religion. What they did to the indios when they destroyed their places of worship, their statuaries, and writings is equivalent to the Moors invading Europe and
destroying every church, burning every book, and smashing all the statues and artworks in Christendom
.”

We both sighed.

I was beginning to feel as bad about what happened to the Aztecs as Carlos. Did that mean that I was becoming
educated
?

FORTY-TWO

T
HE CARRIAGE CARRIED
us through a maguey plantation as we approached the pyramid. Maguey plants were the source of the Aztec beer, pulque.

“An indio legend says that Cholula and Teotihuacán were built by a race of giants,” Carlos said, “sons of the Milky Way. The giants enslaved the Olmec nation, the first great indio nation, but led by their own clever chief, the Olmecs threw a banquet for the giants and got the giants drunk on pulque. After they passed out, the Olmecs slew them.”

I grinned at Carlos. “Being a man of reason, not dominated by superstition and old wives' tales, I do not believe in giants.”

“That's too bad,” Carlos said. “Our best witness from that period, Bernal Díaz, did. A soldier of Cortés, he wrote a history of the Conquest. He said that Aztecs showed him the bones of giants, convincing him the story was true.” Carlos laughed at the look on my face. “But don't worry, amigo, we don't know what kind of old bones the indios showed Díaz.”

I nodded up at the yellow and green–tiled church atop the pyramid. “That church was built on the very spot that blood sacrifices took place?”

“Amazing,” Carlos said. “Already you are becoming a thinker, a questioner, a seeker of truth.”

I tapped the side of my head. “How can I not use my brain when you keep stuffing it? What were these people you call my ancestors really like? I have heard many stories of their savagery. Are those stories not true?”

“Many of the tales are true, probably most of them. We discussed the reason for the blood sacrifices, the covenant with the gods—”

“Blood for rain and sunshine so corn and beans will grow.”

“Blood sacrifice is not something to glory in, any more than Christianity's bloodlettings are a source of pride. But you cannot judge a civilization solely by its mistakes. If that were true, we would condemn Europeans from the time of the Greeks and Romans for their many savage massacres and forget about their contributions to civilization. Speaking of massacres, are you aware that one took place here in Cholula?

“It happened when Cortés was first making his way toward Tenochtitlán, the Aztec capital, after landing on the coast. The facts are controversial because the Spanish and indio versions differ so radically.”

I listened to the tale of murder and bloodlust as we neared the largest pyramid on the face of the earth.

The name Cholula meant “place of springs” in Nahuatl. The city was famous before the arrival of Cortés for the artistic beauty of its pottery. Montezuma and other indio kings would only eat out of Cholulan dishes and cups.

Cholula was on the route Cortés took as he made his way from the coast and over the mountains to Montezuma's city. He stopped en route to investigate Cholula before going on to confront Montezuma in Tenochtitlán. He had made indio allies on the coast, and he thought he could persuade the Cholulans to join forces with him, since they were old enemies of Montezuma.

Cholula dazzled Cortés with its beauty. He called the city “much more beautiful than all those in Spain . . . well-fortified and on very level ground.” From the top of the great pyramid, Cortés said he saw, “four hundred towers, all of mosques,” in reference to indio temples and pyramids.

Cortés was wrong in thinking he could enlist the Cholulans in his bid to conquer the Aztecs. They believed that the invaders would anger the indio gods. Their priests told them that their gods would protect them from these strange men, that if the intruders desecrated their temples, the Lord of Waters would create a huge flood and drown them.

The Spaniards invited the prominent people of the city into the main square but made them enter unarmed. After they arrived, Cortés's men sealed off all the exits, and the slaughter began, with thousands killed before it ended.

Cortés later claimed that the Cholulans—to please Montezuma—were plotting to attack and kill the invaders, leaving only a few alive for sacrifice.
Cortés said an old woman told his translator, Doña Marina, about the plot.

The Cholulans had enlisted the old woman to befriend Doña Marina and get information about the foreigners from her. Because Doña Marina was a woman of beauty and had grown wealthy from Cortés's gifts and payments to her, the old woman told her about the murder plot, hoping Doña Marina would escape death and marry one of her sons. Instead of going along with the treachery, Doña Marina reported it to Cortés, who set a trap for the indios.

Carlos said, “Bartolomeo de Las Casas, a Dominican monk and one of the great historians of the era, wrote that the massacre was an act of cold-blooded murder, designed to inspire fear and terror through the indio nations. He said Cortés committed the massacre so that the Aztecs would be too frightened to attack them after they heard about it.”

“So which is it, señor?” I asked. “Did my ancestors plot to murder my Spanish ancestors, or did Cortés slaughter thousands of innocent indios in cold blood to terrorize the Aztecs into submission?”

Carlos smiled. “You will find, amigo, that all words of men long dead must be given respect.”

FORTY-THREE

I
T WAS TIME
to leave Puebla. The expedition hired new porters for the next leg of the trip south to replace those from Teotihuacán who were returning to their homes. I was the only “old hand” continuing on the journey.

Carlos went into town to walk in the main square he liked so much, while the rest of us gathered at a campsite on the edge of town to organize the goods and equipment for the long trip south. I had finished packing my mule with Carlos's gear when a priest struck me on the back with his walking stick. “You. Come with me.”

Eh, I leave it to your imagination where that stick would have been placed had he done that to me when I was a caballero.

The priest's name was Fray Benito. He was a detestable creature: thin, stoop-shouldered, hatchet-faced, with a bulbous nose and bulging eyes. He was the most disagreeable member of the expedition.

“Help this other peon load my supplies.”

Poor but respectable laborers, most of the indios and mestizos in the colony were called peons, but the fray's new helper was neither respectable nor a laborer. He was a thieving lépero. I saw that after one look at the shifty-eyed bastardo. Had he touched Carlos's supplies, I would have sent
him packing with the imprint of my boot on the back of his pants. I didn't care if he stole the fray blind, however, and cut his throat. The man was rude to porters and had wrongfully whipped more than one.

I was arranging the fray's things when a book fell to the ground. I knelt down to pick it up, and my eye caught the French title on a page inside the cover:
L'École des Filles
—The School of Girls. It claimed to relate the tale of how a “knowledgeable” woman instructs a virgin on how to give and take sexual pleasure and makes reference to a position it called “woman on top.” But the title on the cover proclaimed that it was a history of St. Augustine.

¡Ay! It's the type of book called by the church
pornos graphos
. They're known on the streets as books that can only be read with one hand because the other hand is succumbing to the sin of Onan.

Eh, the fray was a pervert, at least as much as any of us, except he concealed his perversity behind holy robes.

The book was suddenly ripped from my hands. I stared up at Fray Benito. He glared down at me, the nervous bird for once speechless.

“I'm sorry, Fray. I saw the book.” I pointed at the cover. “I like to look at the words that you learned men read. Perhaps someday I will be taught to read, no?”