Blog 11

1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them. -Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

“Many Indians were running along the shore with two banners whih they raised and lowered, signaling us to approach; but the captain did not wish to....The Indians sent one of the canoes ahead to find out what we wanted. The interpreter told them we were looking for gold...The captain told them we did not want anything but gold.” Todorov goes on to say that the first interpreters were Indians, and the interpreter ay or may not have been accurately transmitting what he was told- because an issue of trust was undoubtedly a pivotal issue between two completely foreign entities. The Aztecs were not expected to know how to speak or answer, and the shouts by the Spaniards as orders or exclamations would later become a means of subjugation and colonization. Cortes was an incredibly smart conquistador- successfully manipulating the “caciques” and asking them questions about the state of Mexico and the conduct of war. Because of all these questions and extracted information, he was able to get an intimate understanding of the internal dissensions, and was then able to successfully act as conquistador.

The lasting impact of the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs is a source of great heated debate- the methods by which the Spaniards conquered the Aztecs was surely brutal and unwarranted. The welcoming nature with which the Aztecs greeted the Spaniards was purely religious- Queztalcoatl was supposedly a light-skinned god and the Aztecs believed that the visiting Spaniards could be a possible manifestation of this god. I agree with Todorov’s answer to the question of how the Aztecs were conquered by means of signs, because it was essentially through the manipulation of communication that the Spaniards were capable of robbing, cheating, and killing. The lack of communication between the Aztecs and Spaniards may not have been the issue- because they were in constant contact. Leaders of tribes were used as a means of representation for the entire people, but the Spaniards, painted in a negative light, undoubtedly used the miscommunication that happened between the Aztecan people and the Spaniards to their advantage. Unfortunately, the only way that they could effectively communicate with each other was through simple methods of sign language and using almost infant-like means of telling each other what they wanted and needed.