48 pages • 1-hour read
The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico
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Chapters 15-16Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 15 Summary: “Elegies on the Fall of the City”
Following the fall of Tenochtitlan, Chapter 15 changes gears. It presents three “songs of sorrow,” elegiac poems written by Aztecs reflecting on the fall of their capital.
The first poem, “The Fall of Tenochtitlan,” is from the collection of Cantares Mexicanos and was probably composed in 1523. Its somber verse contrasts the rising cries of the Aztecs’ grief with the falling rain of their tears. It notes the Aztecs fleeing “like women” and asks, “How can we save our homes, my people?” There is no clear solution. The author finally orders the reader to weep, as “we have lost the Mexican nation” (146).
The second poem, “The Imprisonment of Cuauhtémoc,” is a dramatic excerpt from a series of poems recounting the Spanish conquest. It underlines the helpless feelings of the Aztecs and Tlatelolcas trapped in Tenochtitlan through incantatory repetition like “The Aztecs are besieged in the city; the Tlatelolcas are besieged in the city!” (148). It also emphasizes the sensory terror of the warfare inflicted by the Spanish: “The walls are black, / the air is black with smoke, / the guns flash in the darkness” (148-49) and describes the imprisonment of Aztec royalty, including even King Cuauhtémoc’s little niece, Dona Isabel.
The final poem, “Flowers and Songs of Sorrow,” is also from the Cantares Mexicanos. It laments that “nothing but flowers and songs of sorrow” are left in Mexico and Tlatelolco (149). The poem addresses the Giver of Life, claiming he has ordained this fate and wondering if this god has grown weary of or angry at his servants.
Chapter 16 Summary: “Aftermath”
Chapter 16 moves past contemporary accounts of the fall of Tenochtitlan and looks at the long colonial history of Indigenous Mexican Peoples under the Spanish. It is a collection of what editor León-Portilla describes as “numerous manuscripts that told of [Indigenous Peoples’] daily and difficult coexistence with the men of Castile” from the 16th century to the present day (151).
The first passage, “Nahua Men of Noble Lineage Write to the King, May 11, 1556” shows the great lengths Indigenous Peoples went to learn European administrative procedure and secure political representation. The letter, written in part by one of Motecuhzoma’s sons, Pedro Tlacahuepantzin, petitions King Philip II of Spain. Due to many abuses from their colonial Spanish authorities, the letter requests that a person be appointed “who would be our defender, who would reside continuously in [your] royal court, to whom we could go with our necessities” (153). The authors hope this representative might be the trusted local bishop Don Fray Bartolome de las Casas, or anyone else the king believes to be “of good will and very Christian” (153). Time is of the essence: The Nahua “suffer daily” and fear they “will soon be ended, since every day we are more consumed and finished, because [the Spanish colonizers] expel us from our lands and deprive us of our goods” (153).
The writers of a second letter, “Letter of the Council of Huejotzingo to King Philip II, 1560,” ask the king to reduce tribute in recognition of their assistance during the conquest. Their community southeast of Mexico City accepted their colonizers early on: “our Lord God […] enlightened us so that we took you as our king […] no one intimidated us, no one forced us into it” (155). As opposed to “those Tlaxcalans, several of their nobles were hanged for making war poorly,” the letter writers were ever gentle and supportive of the Spanish (156). Despite their loyalty, they now find themselves exploited just like the others. They wonder if Cortés forgot to tell the king how wonderful they are: “perhaps before you he forgot us. How then shall we speak? We did not reach you, we were not given audience before you. Who then will speak for us?” (158).
The next text, “An Eighteenth-Century Nahua Testimony,” is an example of bitter legal protest from the people of Santo Tomas Ajusco. Though written in the 18th century, it is framed as if it were written in 1531: It models what its authors wish their Nahua ancestors would have said centuries earlier. The speaker laments how awfully the Spanish treat their Indigenous subjects, jeering at women and burning dissenters alive (160). In a series of strong hortatory commands, he exhorts listeners to meekly accept baptism and allowing the Spanish to steal all their lands: “Perhaps in this way, they will not kill us” (161).
The next passage is an example of subtly revolutionary literature composed under colonial restrictions. It is an excerpt from an 18th-century dramatization of the conquest of Tenochtitlan. The scene imagines the Aztec king Cuauhtémoc viciously berating Motecuhzoma: “You no longer ought to wear the crown, for you have lost courage and you are afraid” (163). Cuauhtémoc defiantly answers, “I deserve [the crown]. It belongs to me because I am strong of heart, valiant” (164). Though Cuauhtémoc is framed as a villain—the play ends with a chorus singing, “There died poor Cuauhtémoc. He went to Hell” (163)—the writer uses this character as a mouthpiece to voice disdain for the Spanish and their allies.
Next, León-Portilla offers two selections from the manifestos of Emiliano Zapata, a major figure in the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1919. Zapata, “a well-known leader of the Revolution and champion of the landless peasants of southern Mexico, was not himself an Indian, but he was a mestizo”; that is, he was of mixed European and Indigenous ancestry (165). Zapata enlisted large numbers of Nahuas and others to join his fight to take back ancestral Mexican lands from the Spaniards. In his manifestos, he appeals to the people directly in their Nahuatl language, calling for pan-Mexican unity: “Let us keep fighting. We will not rest until we come to possess these lands, those that belonged to our grandfathers, and which the greedy-handed thieves took from us” (168). These manifestos are, in fact, “the last extant examples of public documents in Nahuatl” (166).
Finally, León-Portilla offers a few examples of modern Nahuas poetry. Despite hundreds of years of adversity, “The Nahuas, their invincible spirit, and their language are still very much alive today” (168). In the first poem, Joel Martinez Hernández wonders, “Why is it that [the colonizers] want us to disappear? […] The Coyotes desire / to make Coyotes out of us” (169-70). Another poet, Natalio Hernández Xocoyotzin, asks why his people continue to wait for a savior who can answer all their problems. This man, he suggests, “is in ourselves, / walks along with us. / He has been asleep, / but now he is awakening” (171-72).
Chapters 15-16 Analysis
Chapters 15 and 16 explore the fallout of defeat for the Native Peoples of Mexico. The surrender of Tenochtitlan was, in every sense, a paradigm shift: religiously, culturally, politically, and otherwise, things would never be the same. Indigenous Peoples took many tacks to reorient to this new world. They processed their grief through literature, learned to walk the tightropes of foreign administrative bureaucracy, and eventually, pushed back against and repelled their colonizers.
The elegiac poetry of Chapter 15 captures the nadir of Aztec despair. As León-Portilla explains, “[The poems] reveal, with greater eloquence than the other texts, the deep emotional wound inflicted on the Indians by defeat” (146). Particularly poignant is one author’s sense of abandonment by their gods: “Have you grown weary of your servants? / Are you angry with your servants, / O Giver of Life?” (149). Aztec culture revolved around devout placation of their deities, so losing faith would have been particularly traumatic and alienating. As Diego Munoz Camargo describes in Chapter 5: “[the Tlaxcaltecas] saw [the Spanish] profaning [the gods] with great zeal and determination, and when they also saw that the idols were powerless […] then they understood the deception and knew it all was falsehoods and lies” (45).
The Natives of Mexico not only had to learn how to navigate Spanish law and bureaucracy—they had to do so remotely, with no representatives in the royal court and little leverage to advocate for themselves. Passages from letters pleading with the king are laced with anger, helplessness, and betrayal. Some, like the Nahua men of noble lineage, appeal to the Christian injustice of the cruelties inflicted by their overlords. Others seem taken aback by the betrayal of their Spanish allies. For instance, the writers of the second letter accommodated and supported the Spanish in their military and religious efforts during the war, but now find themselves abused like the others. Their plaintive sense of betrayal recalls Cuitlahuac’s dire warning to his brother, Motecuhzoma: “I pray to our gods that you will not let the strangers into your house. They will cast you out of it and overthrow your rule, and when you try to recover what you have lost, it will be too late” (61).
But still, the Nahuas persisted. Their participation in the Mexican Revolutionary War—as urged by Emiliano Zapata—eventually freed Mexico from Spanish colonial rule. And despite Spain’s systemic efforts to destroy native culture in Mexico, there are “one and a half million […] Nahuas engaged in the centuries-long struggle to preserve and foster their ancestral cultural identities” (168). Their poetry, written in their language of Nahuatl, “shall not wither” like “flowers”: “they shall not cease, my songs” (172).
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