About The Book I'm Reading Right Now

   I'm actually trying to read about six books at the same time. I've made about a hundred pages of the way into a very blow by blow history of the career of Fernando Cortes. It's pretty heartrending in places. It was written in 1865 and does a good job of both being an exhilerating action story and a very morally ambivalent piece of work. Unfortuneately, the lies are laid on pretty thick, but how could it be otherwise? Every single page has between six and twenty contradictions of itself. The writer refers to a lot of first hand accounts that he is working from and it's all battle scenes, so it's no wonder there are so many contradictions and downright lies. What he doesn't whitewash is what he calls mixture of  "war, religion and rapine" that he says characterized that period in European consciousness. At one point-- and may Mexican readers forgive me if I detail this wrong or report it like it's just another story-- the conquistadores are in a huge Aztec city and the Aztecs ask permission to have a ritual dance, minus the human sacrifice. The conquistadores give permission and all these Aztec nobles start dancing in all their gold and the conquistadores suddenly attacked and slaughtered them all! One report is they just couldn't resist seizing all that gold, but another report is they had heard a rebellion was about to happen. Then a battle started where the Spanish became really sorry they had done that, because they were outnumbered maybe thirty thousand to one, but somehow they escaped the capital. But Moctezuma was so sad to be in the Spanish camp under those circumstances that he refused medical treatment for a serious head wound and basically let himself die. It's just an awful set of events and probably happened more or less like it says in the book. Reading and thinking about it makes me rethink a kind of generalized outlook on Mexican Indian response to Christianity that I wrote about here under the heading "Templo de..." It was certainly a very naive and whitewashed article I wrote. I think the reality was just so awful and morally weighted on behalf of the Indians that it is hard for someone of European descent like me to read or write about it without feeling descended from monsters. But there you have it. At least I can keep on learning and writing while I learn.