Quetzalcoatl and the Irony of Empire: Myths and Prophecies in the Aztec Tradition, Revised Edition

Preface to the First Edition

Preface to the First Edition The return of Quetzaicoati and the Irony of Empire: Myths and Prophecies in the Aztec Tradition to print in 1992 is a timely event for at least two reasons. First, in the last decade many of the discoveries of the excavation of the Great Aztec Temple have been published and scholars and journalists are re-imagining the ceremonial worlds of Moctezuma, Quetzalcoatl, Tollan , Teotihuacan, Xochicalco, Chichen itza, and Tenochtitlan . An impressive number of studies, including some by archaeoastronomers- and historians of religions , are revitalizing Mesoamerican studies with new and challenging interpretations. Quetzaicoati reenters the discourse with new conversation partners for interaction. When it first appeared in 1982, it was one of the first studies of Mesoamerican religions written by a historian of religions. Fortunately, it raised considerable critical interest among archaeologists, historians, art historians, and journalists in Europe, Mexico, and the United States, where reviewers both applauded and challenged its ideas. The book attempted a new understanding of Mesoamerican religions by viewing a series of Mesoamerican cities as cosmo-magical symbols . The central thesis was that the symbol of Quetzalcoatl and the symbol of his majestic ceremonial city of Tollan were models for two types of orientation in Mesoamerican culture, the orientation of sacred authority and the orientation of ceremonial space. As I wrote in the Introduction, "These two symbols revealed a vision of the cosmos that depended on the intimacy of city, kingship, and the gods, a vision that helped a number of cultures and capitals achieve stability and legitimacy in a changing world." xiii xiv Preface to the First Edilion Secondly, there is in the nineteen-nineties a phenomenal worldwide interest in the Aztec, Mayan, and Incan civilizations and in New World religions. Museums, art galleries, films, scholarly studies, novels, and television shows are focusing our eyes on the dramas of the encounters among indigenous American, African, and European cultures, peoples, seeds, religions, ideas, myths, and gods. One recurring theme in some of these works and exhibitions, addressed in the last chapter of this book, is the significance of the theme of Quetzalcoatl's return and its role in the conquest of Tenochtitlan. My own work strove for a "creative hermeneutics" of Quetzalcoatl as he was found in indigenous and sixteenth-century sources, which, in the words of Alfredo Lopez Austin, "appear to have been elaborated with a malevolent delight in the prospect of confusing future historians ." During this effort the mirage of Quetzalcoatl in Moctezuma's encounter with Cortes seemed particularly problematic, and probably a post-conquest elaboration of indigenous and Spanish perceptions. I! was clear that the collapse of Aztec authority was caused by multiple factors, including not only weapons, disease, allies, and strategy but also myth. I also discovered that the Quetzalcoatl of Tollan tradition, even when viewed apart from the sixteenth-century accounts of the Moctezuma/Cortes conversations, constituted a sacred history influencing Aztec concepts of rulership, sacred ceremonial order, and political collapse. This sacred history presented Quetzalcoatl of Tollan as one "exemplary model" of not only the ideal type citylking but also as a subversive genealogy of a king who failed to hold the throne in the presence of challenges from intruders who confronted him face to face. Following the still unsurpassed work of H. B. Nicholson on the ethnohistorical record concerning Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl of Tollan, my research affirmed the presence of a pre- as well as a post-contact native expectation of Quetzalcoatl's return (in fact, many gods return in Aztec mythology). In this way Quetzalcoatl could be viewed as doubly subversive. Was it possible that Moctezuma or later interpreters drew on this ambivalent sense of genealogy, this double subversion, as well as on Spanish narrative strategies to interpret Spanish/native encounters. I believe it is possible that they did. More recently a number of writers and translators argue that the story of Moctezuma's abdication of his throne was a post-conquest fabrication by Spaniards (and Indians tinctured by Spanish ideas) seeking to make Cortes look extravagantly effective and Moctezuma look slow to react to this-worldly political developments. In a series of publications focusing on our encounter with Spanish/Aztec encounters relayed through sixteenth-century sources, several scholars argue that Cortes's desperate political need to persuade the King of Spain of his successes in the field and thereby increase royal favor is Preface to the First Edition xv the primary agenda...