Source:El Español

Argentine geopolitical analyst Marcelo Gullo responds to Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and challenges him to a debate on Hernán Cortés’ liberation of the Americas.

On 13 August 1521, immense joy flooded the hearts of the indigenous masses of Mesoamerica. Some laughed, others wept. Some felt great relief, others thirsted for revenge. Many prepared their weapons to exterminate, once and for all, their enemies without distinguishing between men and women, old and young. Such was their resentment and hatred – held in check for years – that they wanted to wipe their executioners off the face of the earth.

But a “strange, bearded man” stayed their hand. What were those Indians celebrating? Who was the “bearded man” who prevented the imminent massacre?

They were celebrating that they – Tlaxcaltecs, Texcocotecs, Cholultecs, Xochimilcatecs, and Otomi, among other peoples – together with a small group of men from the sea had defeated a mighty army that, for years, had seemed invincible.

They celebrated the fall of Tenochtitlán. They were celebrating the fact that they had finally put an end to the anthropophagous imperialism of the Aztecs. They wanted revenge on the Aztecs who, for years and years, had snatched their children, their siblings, their parents, to drag them to the “major temple” of Tenochtitlán and, there, to tear out their hearts, literally, while they were still alive, and then to cut their bodies into pieces, so that they would serve, once “slaughtered like pigs or chickens”, as “substantial food” for the Aztec nobility and priests.

The “bearded man” who managed to contain all the anger of those Indians, thirsty for revenge – a thirst accumulated over long years of Aztec subjugation and anthropophagy -, the “strange man” who prevented the genocide – which seemed inevitable – of the Aztecs, was the legendary Hernán Cortés, the liberator of Mesoamerica.

In that region, which today is part of the Republic of Mexico, there was “one oppressor nation”, the Aztecs, and “dozens of oppressed nations”, the Tlaxcalans, the Texcocotecs, the Cholultecs….

Alongside those three hundred brave Spanish soldiers who took Tenochtitlán, fought, side by side, approximately two hundred thousand Indians. At the head of this immense army was an Indian woman: Doña Marina, who had been first a sex slave of the Aztecs and then of the Mayas. She had her “own scores to settle” with the Aztecs.

The writer and analyst Marcelo Gullo.

The writer and analyst Marcelo Gullo.

The conquest of Mexico was made by the Indians who were exploited, oppressed, and harassed by the Aztecs. And that is the whole secret of the history of Mexico, which many are determined to hide, among others, the current president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Praising the Aztecs and their emperor, Moctezuma, for their great constructions – as the president of Mexico does – is like praising the Nazis and Adolf Hitler for the construction of the best motorways in Germany’s history, which are still being used to this day.

I have repeated more than once, and this has caused the “anger” of the President of the Republic of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, against me, that if Spain had to apologise for having defeated the anthropophagous Aztec imperialism, both the United States and Russia would have to apologise for having defeated the genocidal Nazi imperialism.

To be sure, the battle for Tenochtitlán – which put an end to Aztec imperialism – was bloody, but as bloody, no doubt, as the battle for Berlin, which put an end to Nazi totalitarianism.

So bloodthirsty was that unprecedented anthropophagous imperialism of the Aztecs that today it seems unbelievable that something so monstrous could have happened. But it is so unusual and even unbelievable that that is why it is necessary to “document the facts”.

The archaeological excavations, as well as the fortuitous discoveries that took place as a result of the construction of great public works (such as the Mexico City Metro, for example), allow us to affirm today, with absolute scientific certainty, that such was the number of human sacrifices that the Aztecs carried out, always of people from the peoples enslaved by them, that they used the skulls to build the walls of their buildings and temples.

Each new excavation reveals more and more walls, built with stone and… skulls! Skulls with their teeth facing outwards. The most recent evidence confirming the “holocaust” committed by the Aztecs dates to 2015 when, because of archaeological excavations being carried out next to the Metropolitan Cathedral of Mexico, a tower of skulls was found which, amazingly, matched, point by point, to the description made by the Spanish chroniclers.

Today, as we have already said, the scientific evidence is abundant and irrefutable: sacrificial stones with traces of haemoglobin, obsidian tools for this work, human skeletons executed by cardioectomy with cut marks on the ribs, decapitations…

When one analyses history without prejudice and does not want to hide the truth, one comes to the conclusion that the Aztecs carried out, as a state policy, the conquest of other indigenous peoples in order to have human beings for sacrificing to their gods and then use the human flesh, thus obtained, as the main food for the nobles and priests, as if it were simple animal protein. Year after year, the Aztecs would snatch their children from the peoples they had conquered, murder them in their temples and then devour them with relish.

“Throughout the rest of the world”, says Mexican philosopher and historian José Vasconcelos, “it has been considered unnatural to kill, and people have killed knowing that they were committing a crime. Only the Aztecs killed for pleasure and by the command of their bloodthirsty god Huichilobos.”

The Mexican archaeologist Alfonso Caso – former rector of the prestigious National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) – explains that “human sacrifice was essential in the Aztec religion”. And it is precisely for this reason that, in 1487, to celebrate the completion of the construction of the great temple of Tenochtitlán – of which President López Obrador inaugurated a monumental model on 13 August – the sacrificial victims formed four rows that stretched along the causeway linking the islands of Tenochtitlán.

It is estimated that in those four days of feasting alone, the Aztecs killed between 20,000 and 24,000 people. However, Williams Prescott, unsuspicious of Hispanism, gives an even more chilling figure: “When, in 1486, the great temple of Mexico was dedicated to Huitzilopochtli, the sacrifices lasted several days, and seventy thousand victims perished.”

Juan Zorrilla de San Martín, in his book Historia de América, relates that: “When they took the children to be killed, if they cried and shed more tears, those who took them rejoiced, because they took predictions that they would have many rainsfalls in that year.”

“The number of victims sacrificed per year – acknowledges Prescott, one of the most critical historians of the Spanish conquest and one of the most fervent defenders of the Aztec civilisation – was immense. Hardly any author computes it at less than twenty thousand each year, and there are still some who put it as high as one hundred and fifty thousand.”

Marvin Harris in his famous work, Cannibals and Kings relates: “The prisoners of war, ascending the steps of the pyramids, were seized by four priests, stretched face up on the stone altar and cut open from side to side of the chest with a knife… Then the victim’s heart – usually described as still beating – was torn out. The body was rolled down the pyramid steps.”

Where were the bodies of the hundreds of human beings whose hearts had been cut out at the top of the pyramids taken? What then happened to the victim’s body? What was the fate of the bodies that, day by day, were sacrificed to the gods?

In this respect, Michael Hamer, who has analysed this question more intelligently and with more courage than the rest of the specialists, states: “There is really no mystery as to what happened to the corpses since all eyewitness accounts broadly agree: the victims were eaten.”

And what happened after the anthropophagous imperialism of the Aztecs was defeated, after those first hours of blood, pain, and death? Spain merged its blood with that of the vanquished and with that of the liberated. And let us remember that there were more liberated than defeated. As proof of what we have just said, there is the story of Isabel Moctezuma, the legitimate daughter of Emperor Moctezuma, who after the conquest bcame one of the richest and most influential women in Mexico.

Isabel was already thirty years old when she remarried for the fifth time to the conquistador from Extremadura, born in the city of Cáceres, Don Juan Cano de Saavedra, with whom she procreated five new Spanish Americans, grandchildren of the emperor Moctezuma. His children were Juan Cano Moctezuma, Pedro Cano Moctezuma, Gonzalo Cano Moctezuma, Isabel Cano Moctezuma, and María Cano Moctezuma.

It is important to note that the two sisters, Isabel and María, would become nuns and would live, from then on, in the convent of the Conception in Mexico City. While Juan Cano Moctezuma married Elvira Toledo Ovando and his brother Gonzalo Cano Moctezuma married Ana Prado Calderón. It should be noted that the mestizos Juan and Gonzalo, grandsons of the emperor Moctezuma, married daughters of Spanish noblemen. This small detail should not be forgotten.

Cover of the book Madre Patria, by Marcelo Gullo.

Cover of the book Madre Patria, by Marcelo Gullo.

This is the historical truth that I relate in my book Madre Patria and which has irritated his excellency the President of the Republic of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who last August 13th, on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the liberation – for him the “fall” – of Tenochtitlán, accused me, without any kind of proof – and without even taking the trouble to look at my academic record or to gather information about my already long anti-imperialist political career – of being a representative of the colonialist school of thought.

In other historical eras, such offences were settled on the field of honour. Today there are other times, which some call more civilised. That is why I demand of the President of the Republic of Mexico – considering him a man of honour, who seeks the truth – that he calls a proper debate on the Conquest of America – as Emperor Carlos V had the courage to call for in the year 1550 – which could take place at a university in Switzerland, the one of the President’s choice, and which would be attended by five specialists who defend the President’s thesis and five specialists who, like the present writer, maintain that Spain did not conquer America, but rather that Spain liberated America.

I am therefore awaiting the President’s reply, so that I can go to the city of Switzerland of his choice, accompanied by four thinkers chosen by me, to confront, in an academic debate, the intellectuals who, in equal numbers, will be designated by the current President of the Republic of Mexico.

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