Magazines - Tribal Art Summer 2010

By Sebastian Miller, independant scholar.

Introduction
Conventional Western history tells us that when the Spanish first encountered the Aztec culture of Mexico in the sixteenth century, they were confronted with a spectacle of unimaginable savagery, otherworldly splendor, and a religious system so inconceivably alien and dangerous that it had to be destroyed. Not entirely so, say John M. D. Pohl and Claire L. Lyons, the curators of the fascinating exhibition The Aztec Pantheon and the Art of Empire, presently being shown at the Getty Villa in Malibu, California, as part of a celebration of the bicentennial of Mexican Independence and the centennial of the Mexican Revolution. They posit an entirely different and very intriguing reaction that has roots in Classical antiquity. The confrontation between the Spanish and the Aztec that resulted in the abrupt destruction of the latter is one that is largely misunderstood today. The term by which it is remembered, the Conquest, implies domination by force of arms, and indeed the Spanish did bring with them the tactical innovations of gunpowder, steel armor, and horses—the last being perhaps the most effective in that context. In truth, Hernán Cortés’ small expeditionary force was nearly wiped out in engagements with natives several times before it reached the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan. But what Cortés was incapable of doing with his own men, he was able to coordinate by inciting a popular uprising against a despotic regime. Within two years of the Spanish arrival, the relatively young Aztec Empire was in ruins and the millennia-old cultural patrimony of the Americas was in desperate peril.