Constellations of Memory

Last week I made another trip downtown, this time to see a special exhibit at the National Museum of Art called "Constelaciones de la Memoria".

Last year was the 500th anniversary of the fall of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan to the Spanish.  This exhibition contains a variety of objects which portray that conquest and its legacy.

Here are a few of the items on display...

An 1885 painting entitled "The Visit of Cortés to Moctezuma" by Juan Ortega

We refer to the Aztec emperor as Montezuma, but in Mexico he is called Moctezuma.  In Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, his name was actually Motecuhzoma.  

The woman next to Cortés, is La Malinche, the native woman who served as his interpreter and eventually became his mistress.

A 2019 painting by Daniel Lezama entitled "Cortés and Malinche in Centla".

When Cortés landed on the coast of the present day state of Tabasco, he fought and defeated an army of the Chontal Mayas who inhabited the region.  Afterwards Cortés was given twenty slave women.  La Malinche was one of them.  

A sculpture of La Malinche done in 1852 by Manuel Vilar,

The cover of a children's history book, "Cortés before Moctezuma" published in 1900

The illustration was done by the famous engraver, José Guadalupe Posada.

The title page illustration of "México Através de los Siglos" (Mexico through the Centuries), a five volume history of the nation published in 1884.

This photograph of the Grand Historic Parade, held as a part of the 1910 centennial of Mexico's independence, shows participants dressed as Aztec warriors.

A 1947 painting by the famous muralist José Clement Orozco entitled "Spanish Soldiers and Indians"

Moctezuma, who had welcomed the Spanish into the Aztec capital, was eventually killed by his own people, and the Aztec forces drove the Spanish out of Tenochtitlan.  Legend has it that after the battle, in which the Spanish suffered heavy losses, Cortés sat under a cypress tree and wept.

That tree survived for centuries and became known as the "Tree of the Sad Night".  The famous landscape painter José María Velasco did this watercolor of the tree as it appeared in 1910.  The tree finally died in the 1960s, but the trunk still stands.  Last year its name was officially changed to the "Tree of the Victorious Night" in honor of the resistance against the Spanish invaders.

The last Aztec emperor was Cuauhtémoc, a cousin of Moctezuma.

He is portrayed in this bronze bust done in 1891 by the sculptor Jesús Fructuoso Contreras.

After his disastrous retreat from Tenochtitlan, Cortés regrouped and laid siege to the Aztec capital.  On August 13, 1521, Cuauhtémoc surrendered, and he was taken prisioner.

Cortés, seeking the hidden treasure of Moctezuma, had Cuauhtémoc tortured, by placing his feet over hot coals.  

This sculpture, done in 1887 by Gabriel Guerra, portrays "The Torture of Cuauhtémoc".

According to one legend, another Aztec noble was tortured along with him.  While Cuauhtémoc withstood the torture stoically, the other noble cried out in pain.  Cuauhtémoc supposedly said, "And do you think that I am sitting in a bed of roses?"

Cuauhtémoc never revealed the location of any treasure.  Later, Cortés accused him of plotting against the Spanish, and put him to death.

A photograph taken in 1900 shows the monument to Cuauhtémoc, which was erected along the Paseo de la Reforma in 1887.

No are no monuments in Mexico to Cortés!