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148 15 The Tensions of Empire (Mexico City, 1565–1595) The scattered records of moros y cristianos in Mexico during the rest of the sixteenth century do not support the idea that there was a “rich pageant staged annually in the central plaza of Mexico City to reenact the conquest of the Aztec capital” or that there was anywhere “an annual battle of Moors and Christians.”1 As in medieval Spain, with the single exception of the Catalan Turks and hobby horses, mock battles between Moors and Christians in sixteenth-century Mexico were occasional rather than annual. In October 1565, Alonso de Avila, son of the conquistador of the same name, rode into Mexico City, dressed as Motecuzoma, with twenty-four friends disguised as Indian nobles. The party was warmly greeted by a group of simulated conquistadors , led by Martín Cortés, the second Marqués del Valle, who played the role of his own father. After a fanciful reenactment of the first encounter of the two leaders , in which Motecuzoma, “to the murmur of instruments and the applause of the assembly,” placed feathered wreaths on the heads of Cortés and his wife, all the participants “dined in native style.” Afterward, in the street, the two sides fought a “dainty skirmish” with shields and with balls made of dried mud and filled with ashes or flowers. The fathers of Cortés and Avila had both taken part in the Conquest of Rhodes. The 1565 affair staged by their sons was theatrically less ambitious, a private masquerade rather than a public performance, but it may secretly have set its sights higher, motivated less by theatrical than by conspiratorial ends. At a dinner that followed the skirmish, the actors may have discussed a plot to overthrow the colonial government and crown Martín Cortés king of an independent New Spain. Ten months later, in August 1566, Avila and his brother were beheaded for their part in what Henry Bamford Parkes calls “the last movement for Mexican independence among the creoles for more than two hundred years.” Martín Cortés was sent to stand trial in Spain.2 Although the Mexica had already adapted their own songs and companion dances to represent the conquest, the 1565 masquerade is the first record of a Spanish-style mock battle whose public transcript recalled the history of Mexico rather than that of Europe. If the conspiracy theory is correct, it was designed not to indoctrinate a passive Indian audience with notions of Spanish invincibility but to mask a hidden transcript of creole insurgency. In 1572, events in Europe, much as they had done in 1539, prompted a celebratory moros y cristianos in Mexico City. On 7 October 1571, a Christian navy under the command of John of Austria destroyed the Ottoman fleet in the bay of Lepanto. The Turks lost 30,000 men, 117 ships, and 650 cannon. This is the naval battle recalled by the morismas of Bracho. Although the impact of the victory proved short-lived, it appeared at the time to guarantee Christian control of the Mediterranean and to justify fresh hopes of reclaiming Jerusalem.3 News of the victory arrived in Mexico early in 1572, and a mock battle was planned that year for 25 July, the feast day of Santiago. The Códice Aubin provides our only record of the play: “A scenic wooden building [quauhteocalli] was raised so that the lords might be represented as the Moors who were scattered. They were conquered as they were in their own land. This is how they did it: first they arrived and fought in boats; then they fought on horseback ; later they arrived on foot and went on the flat roof. This happened today, Friday 25 July 1572.” The codex includes a drawing of a four-dimensional single-story scenic unit, with a front doorway, an open roof with a ledge around the top of the wall, and what may be a rear central tower. Two faces peer over the ledge. The building sits in the center of a square walled yard with a tower at each corner and a front gateway (see Fig. 15b). Although quauhteocalli literally means “wooden god house” or, as Charles Dibble translates it, “iglesia [church],” it seems in this instance to signify a scenic city or castle. The codex uses the same word elsewhere to describe what Horcasitas believes to be an illustration of the scenic city of Rhodes in 1539 (see Fig...

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