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Maurice Collis

Cortes and Montezuma
 

The convergence of Cortes and Montezuma is the most emblematic event in the birth of what would come to be called "America." Landing on the Mexican coast on Good Friday, 1519, Hernan Cortes felt himself the bearer of a divine burden to conquer and convert the first advanced civilization Europeans had yet encountered in the West. For Montezuma, leader of the Mexicans, April 21, 1519 (known in their sophisticated astronomical system as 9 Wind Day) was the precise date of a dire prophesy: the return of Quetzalcoatl, a fearsome god predicted to arrive by ship, from the East, with light skin, a black beard,
robed in black exactly as Cortes would.

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Montezuma II (or Moctezuma) was trained as a priest and rose to become
leader of the Aztecs in 1502. At the time the Aztecs controlled most of
what is now Mexico and Central America, their capital being at the great
city of Tenotchitlan (Mexico City). The story goes that when Cortes arrived
in 1519, Montezuma thought the Spanish conquerors were descendants of
the god Quetzalcoatl. Montezuma allowed the Spaniards to enter
Tenotchitlan unopposed, and he was captured and held hostage by Cortes.
Montezuma was either killed by a rock in the head from a crowd of his own
people, or he was stabbed by the Spaniards, depending on who tells the
story.
 
 

Hernando Cortes was born in the village of Medellin in Entremedura, Spain, in 1485. At the age of 14,
he left home to study law at the University of Salamanca and returned home two years later. He
wandered the seaports of Cadiz, Palos, Sanlucar, an d Seville and in 1504 joined an expedition of five
ships that sailed for Santo Domingo in the New World. Cortes wanted to become a conquistador (a
conqueror as well as an explorer) for Spain.