# Townsend **Channel:** senya lubisich **Source:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgqejHev2hM **Transcript page:** https://www.withtranscript.ai/video/tgqejHev2hM ## Chapters - 0:08 — Framing the Conquest Narrative - 11:59 — Townsend Challenges the White Gods - 21:32 — Sources, Translation, and Misreading - 30:42 — Why the Spanish Actually Won - 41:16 — Aftermath and Historical Legacy ## Transcript **[0:08] Speaker A:** Hi, I'm Eloise Arate, storyteller, and for this video, she's going to force me to be a historian. **[0:15] Speaker B:** I am. I'm so excited. I'm Senja Lubisich, historian, forcing Eloy to be a historian with me today. I'm personally really, really excited to get to do this lecture slash discussion because it is a topic in which Aloi specialized. **[0:33] Speaker B:** And so while I get to play the role of historian generally, I am very excited to have him help us drill down and talk about this article by Camilla Townsend called Bearing the White Gods. **[0:47] Speaker A:** Well, with the pressure on of having to be a historian, especially when this would be an incredible story story to tell. One of the things that we're going to delve into in this video and again, kind of touching on the issues that we have spoken about previously in the previous videos. How, as a historian, do you measure and factually document an event? How do you show change over time? **[1:18] Speaker A:** Those are all the things that we have spoken about over and over and over in the previous videos. But now in this particular event, we're going to show you how the narrative, or the traditional narrative, has taken over in terms of what actually happened in history. You can't say an event didn't or did happen, right? It's like, well, that did happen, but how it happened, how it played out, the consequences of how it plays out, is very, very important in terms of getting the facts across. But unfortunately, you'll have myth or legend around it. **[2:03] Speaker A:** That in itself kind of plays and pushes forward a particular value set as you're explaining any particular event. **[2:14] Speaker B:** And we've addressed this as we've talked about the craft of being a historian in some of the other videos. Historians don't sit around and debate a date. We debate the causes and consequences of what happened on that event or around that date. So it's looking at how do we go about verifying Zillow was saying those events, how do we make sense of the causes and consequences? How are we explaining that and then really being careful as we craft the narrative that we're not exaggerating or elevating or bringing in what we want the story to be, beyond what the primary sources, the things that we can verify, allow us to tell that story to be. **[3:02] Speaker A:** Also, what plays an important point is again, the historiography. Why has an event been looked at in a particular way? Why has it continued to be an important event over time? These are all things that we have to verify clearly, we have to question, but we also have to think about how is the story being used for any particular social, cultural, political, religious motivation? **[3:30] Speaker A:** And this event that we're going to talk about today, which has been claimed by Karl Marx and Adam Smith, again, two very important economists, historians that have overwhelmingly been the most influential voices in terms of how we look at history, say that this event, the conquest of the Spanish, the conquest of the Aztecs by the Spanish, is the most important political and economic event in world history for the past 1,000 years. **[4:05] Speaker B:** And we're sort of off. I'm excited to get to do this lecture finally now because it's also the 500 year anniversary of the conquest. And I think as we unpack it a bit, the current context of the coronavirus pandemic should lend itself to a really interesting perspective as we talk about what actually took place. **[4:29] Speaker A:** And I didn't even think about that. All the different layers of this story. This story has absolutely everything in it. **[4:36] Speaker B:** Yeah, as does the article. For those of you who've already tried reading Camila Townsend's article before watching our discussion of it, she has so much in this article. **[4:46] Speaker A:** Yes. **[4:47] Speaker A:** Well, let's just first start. We do an overview of the article or do we do an overview of the event? **[4:53] Speaker B:** Oh, let's talk about the story. Story. **[4:54] Speaker A:** Oh, the story. Okay. The expert in the story. You don't need, you don't need to be an expert in the story. And I'll just, I'll give you the, the short version, because the short version is as. Is as easy to tell as the long version. **[5:10] Speaker A:** The very short version, in a political sense, is that you have Hernan Cortez, Spanish conquistador, leading about 200 guys. He lands on the Yucatan peninsula. He burns his ships so nobody can escape. No one can literally escape. His men can't escape if they wanted to take off. **[5:33] Speaker A:** And the people that they're confronting have nowhere to go. So Hernan Cortez, a very shrewd political leader in Conqueror, has set the tone that they are going to move forward. What he does over the next few months is slowly march towards the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan. As he is marching towards, there's a story that begins to emerge. And this is the narrative that his 250 guys are going to overwhelm millions of indigenous people, which is impossible. **[6:13] Speaker B:** But it's also a story that we love. And just in history, if you are a fan of 300 the movie, it's about as **[6:24] Speaker A:** 300 dudes overcoming. But they lose. But they tried. **[6:30] Speaker B:** And in the movie, they look beautiful. **[6:32] Speaker A:** They are **[6:33] Speaker B:** beautiful. But we love to kind of craft that story. And so even for me as a non specialist, and those types of repetitive patterns mean that you need to bring a more critical view to what you're talking about. **[6:44] Speaker B:** And more broadly speaking, the story of the underdog is just one that culturally we love. **[6:52] Speaker A:** We don't just like the underdog. We like stories and narratives of good over evil, light over darkness, the weak and meek becoming powerful, rich and influential. These are all very powerful narratives in our culture and how we'd like to tell stories, because history is not supposed to inspire. And I think that's something we haven't told you yet. **[7:24] Speaker A:** History does not inspire anything. It just tells you what happened and how you're arguing about the past, the storyteller, they inspire. And that's an important part of this story because this is the type of narrative that will be repeated for the next 500 years up to the present. The idea of conquering people that are backwards, traditional, and need to be brought forward into the modern age. And that is one of the reasons why the people that I mentioned say that this is a very important event, because it is the beginning of creating the world that we live in. And it's going to bring a lot of, a lot of complications into how we look at our modern world. So what happens is to continue. Cortez marching towards Tenochtitlan will eventually win the, eventually overthrow the Aztecs. But does he just do it militarily? Does he do it culturally? **[8:31] Speaker A:** Does he do it by magic? Does he do it by, by God's siding or on his side? Oh, wait, I'm turning into the storyteller. I, I'm, I'm sorry. **[8:44] Speaker B:** I just watched you spin out there, right? **[8:45] Speaker A:** It's **[8:45] Speaker B:** like, boy, and I can bring it back part of the way, but you go too far **[8:50] Speaker A:** and I gotta go, no, wait, I'll take the last step. He's able to do it because these poor peasants that he's conquering believe he's a God and that he has supernatural powers to be. Be able to overthrow them. **[9:06] Speaker A:** But again, 200 guys versus 2 million or whatever. I'm just throwing out whatever number. That's a pretty. Those are stiff odds. **[9:18] Speaker B:** Extremely stiff. **[9:18] Speaker A:** And he's able to do it. So that's basically. That's as the story goes. And that's the basic fundamental framing of this story that is accepted to this day, **[9:32] Speaker B:** taught, **[9:33] Speaker A:** taught in classes. **[9:34] Speaker B:** I would honestly put some good money down that what Aloya just recounted. A lot of you are like, yeah, that's what I learned There will be some of you who are like, yeah, my grandparents never believed that crap, but it's what we teach. And that's, I think, really one of the things that we want you to be aware of, that historians can do good work laying out, verifying and talking about the causes and consequences around an event. But what we build into the narrative has tremendous power. And if that narrative is laced with myth and legend and cultural desires and values and aspirations, then it becomes a really dangerous piece of story. And it perpetuates, no matter. And it's so hard to deconstruct that once you've bought into that cultural story, once it makes you feel good, it's really hard to take it apart unless you have something else that makes you feel good. **[10:32] Speaker A:** Okay, you might be sitting there as we were going on and on about the story, but historically, I think we should. **[10:43] Speaker A:** What do you call it? **[10:44] Speaker A:** Spoiler alert. Yeah. The Aztecs are going to lose, so we're not going to change the history. **[10:51] Speaker B:** Let's talk about those layers. **[10:53] Speaker A:** That's right. And that's what we're going to talk about, is those layers. So here's Camille Townsend, and let's just say she says, stop it. **[11:04] Speaker B:** Yeah, she's really fed up. And I think one of the things that is important to do in reading, period, and one of the things, as a college student who is reading a variety of different kinds of texts, you really have to pay attention not just to the words on the paper that are being assigned to you, but publication dates. This article is nearly 20 years old. **[11:25] Speaker B:** It was published in the American Historical Association's journal. It's a highly reputable journal. So this is where the big discussions in history are taking place. And Camila Townsend is coming and saying, enough already. Like, really, come on. **[11:41] Speaker B:** We all know that they didn't think that Cortez was a God. So let's quit entertaining it as one of the potential stories that are out there. Let's just bury it literally six feet under, tombstone it and be done with it, and let's talk about the real history. **[11:59] Speaker A:** Her title is Burying the White Gods. And then she says, a new perspective on the conquest of Mexico. **[12:07] Speaker A:** That's not true, because this is not a new perspective. It is a perspective that historians have known for generations. **[12:16] Speaker B:** But I would say that you're in your discipline. For Latin Americanists, absolutely not a new perspective. But for others of us in other fields of specialty, who are only generally looking at the Americas, we are using it as confirmation of that pattern, of the many patterns that Come with conquest of the ideas that will be imbued with superiority, whether it's military superiority, cultural superiority, religious superiority. **[12:46] Speaker B:** So we are still using it as an affirmation of those assumptions. And by her bringing it to the American Historical Review, she is saying, okay, all of you guys still doing the old stuff, here's the new perspective you need to have. Here's what Latin Americanists know, and we would really like you collectively to start using this one, too. **[13:06] Speaker A:** And that's a good point. I didn't think of it in that way because I've always said, for as long as we've been together, I love being a Latin American historian. **[13:16] Speaker A:** It has always been on the cutting edge of looking at the world in a different way because it's such a special place. And. And the forces, cultural, political and economic forces in Latin America since this event have been kind of reflecting what will catch up to the rest of the world. So Latin Americans have been dealing with a lot of these issues for a longer period of time now. What Camilla Townsend brings up that I think is very important is that she places these types of stories in a very particular perspective, which I think is incredibly, incredibly powerful. **[13:52] Speaker B:** It's visceral. **[13:53] Speaker A:** It is visceral. And I think. And we have spoken about this, only a woman could have brought this to bear. She. **[14:02] Speaker A:** She argues that these types of stories. **[14:05] Speaker B:** And when we say types of stories, it's these stories of revere, of awe, of adulation, of. Of holding someone up and really putting them on this mythic, legendary pedestal **[14:17] Speaker A:** and not looking at the consequences of what happened. So what she places these stories in, these kinds of white people as gods or the conqueror coming in and winning good over evil, is that she calls them a type of pornography. **[14:36] Speaker A:** And all of you should be familiar with pornography. But if you understand what pornography is right at its core, and we're not talking about, and it could be any kind of relationship you have with an image or an idea that is false but makes you feel a particular way. So in pornography, if it's sexual or if it's whatever it is, that you are being titillated by it, that you're being drawn into it, that you're being drawn into a space in your mind that is giving you some type of fundamental instinctual satisfaction, right? So she's saying that these stories, these conquest stories, are satisfying culturally white superiority. Right? This idea that Europeans are going around and being welcomed as gods around the world, and that that feeds into the cultural idea of a superiority also. What it does is not listening to what Mexicans have thought about that event. **[15:55] Speaker A:** Because in Mexico they call this la cingada, right? The literally screwing over of who we are. Right. It's a rape. The consequence of this is going to bring mixed race people that overwhelmingly are going to come out of a raping of another culture. And not just with indigenous people. We've all been hearing about what happened with slaves when they came over, right? So you can see this consequences of literally a raping. **[16:26] Speaker A:** So when I read Camilla Townsend and she brings up the idea of pornography, I'm literally looking at you are saying it is okay to have violence, to have these sexual conquests. That is feeding into a larger cultural idea. **[16:42] Speaker B:** And I would say pulling that idea even further, that the violence doesn't even become part of it because the people are so awestruck or grateful that this God has returned, which is the narrative that we construct, that it's not a new God, this is a God that they are anticipating. So it is really sort of a gratitude that is, **[17:02] Speaker A:** this is in your best interest. **[17:04] Speaker A:** This is going to be good for you. Just listen to the story. So this is going to be good for you. And the story that we're telling is the one that is repeated over and over and over. And there's a lesson in it. **[17:18] Speaker A:** And that I think from her perspective, that insight, even if you disagree with everything she's going to bring up to try to verify and show you this is not true. That point alone should give everyone pause. In any story that you're listening to. And we have repeated this over and over. It's not the stories you disagree with that are the most dangerous. **[17:45] Speaker A:** It's the ones you agree with because you're not going to ask those kind of tough questions of them. And this event is so huge that now how she's going to lay out this is what we. This is, this is what has been overlooked when we're dealing with this event. What really happened or where are we getting our information of what really happened? And for those two things, those are the two things that are most important for historians. **[18:15] Speaker B:** And I think she, in the very, very first paragraph of the paper lays that out. If that's really where we ground ourselves as historians. And she starts the article by saying, look at where we're getting our information. It's not from Cortez, it's not from the Mexica. It's from a biographer who never went to the Americas who wasn't a part of this massive event. **[18:41] Speaker B:** And he's the one who starts this story that we all glom onto. Well, maybe not all of us, but that is glommed onto. **[18:49] Speaker A:** Well, then let's start. **[18:50] Speaker B:** Great. **[18:50] Speaker A:** Let's start her critique. **[18:53] Speaker B:** Right, **[18:53] Speaker A:** so her first critique, there's going to be three major ones, and they're going to be influenced by two very important historians. Jared diamond, who has now written three major works on history. **[19:07] Speaker B:** But at this time, it's really his Guns, Germs and Steel that she's drawing on, **[19:11] Speaker A:** which is. Which is the book that really shook up a lot of the historical perspective with this marvelous piece. And then he. She is using Armesto, which is the person that we use a lot because he's the one that started really breaking down and re evaluating the traditional perspectives into a more rational global perspective. **[19:39] Speaker B:** And I just want to point out, in light of what we said about Latin American historians and history, no surprise that Armesto is coming from that field to world history, **[19:47] Speaker A:** and he's coming from that perspective. **[19:49] Speaker A:** So she's going to use both of these historians as kind of the leading charge in terms of bringing the critiques. Armesto with his kind of snarky, you know, snarky perspective on the traditional view. And then you have Jared diamond, who is very, very meticulous, very, very focused on how guns, germs and technology will turn the tide of history. So Armesto's going to batter the narrative. Jared Diamond's going to bring a more rational perspective on how to look on certain events without having to create a myth and legend around it that happened. **[20:36] Speaker A:** This is why it wasn't magical, wasn't mystical. It can be measured and don't make it any more than that. So I think it's important that Townsend's publishing this article when these two historians are starting to take off 20 years later. It's Armesto is the world history standard of looking at history. And then you have Jared diamond, who's now written books about this is how the world started. **[21:02] Speaker A:** This is how the world's going to collapse if we don't do that. So he's already gone through his whole kind of method of what he wanted to get across. So you have these two historians that Townshend is going to stand right behind as she plows them. She's literally using them as a plow. I'm going to plow ahead and I'm going to break up this old story and myth that everybody knows is not true. **[21:26] Speaker A:** But now I'm going to use their two methods to show you how they're not true. **[21:32] Speaker A:** Right. So what's the first thing that she brings up, the first critique of her. Of her. Of her paper. Right. Where are we getting the information? **[21:43] Speaker B:** So deconstructing that narrative. **[21:45] Speaker A:** Yeah. So how are we getting the story that the Spanish are gods? **[21:50] Speaker A:** Right. That this is some kind of mythical story? And she goes through, this is what's being said, this is what's being happened. Somebody interpreted that as being your welcoming gods or you're welcoming people. **[22:03] Speaker B:** Well, she. **[22:04] Speaker B:** She first just sort of looks at, I would say, almost a genre of literature that comes out of Conquest and exploration. These travelogues were the huge reading. And so there's an audience, a particular appetite for this type of story that you're trying to satisfy. And so Cortez's biographer is shrewd in crafting a narrative that is going to attract a reading audience. And so locating the origin of this myth in that narrative that has a market is a really important thing to look at. **[22:38] Speaker B:** And she'll juxtapose it with these accounts of what's happening more on the ground. Looking at chroniclers like Bernal Diaz, who are really critical of what is happening on the Spanish side. She's going to unpack some of the Nahuas and do that critically because they are happening a generation after conquest within a mission system. And so you need to be critical of who's doing that writing. And again, what is the context and audience of those writings? But it really is this wonderful deconstructing of. These are the pieces we have. These are the sources we agree upon. And so let's really look at what they say and not how we have fit them into these other narratives. **[23:20] Speaker A:** So basically, all the sources that say that the Spanish were gods were written in the second generation of the people that experienced it. So no firsthand accounts. Let's go to. Cortez's book never says he's welcomed as a God. Wouldn't he be the first one? He's the God, Right. **[23:41] Speaker A:** So he writes the tome, you know, these big old books that I had to read. You know, his firsthand account, like his Autobiography of the Conquest, never says it. The people who were tied to him also did not say that he was welcomed as a God. This was a conquest. He was making allies. He was doing all these things as a political ruler, **[24:04] Speaker B:** which just in sort of unpacking some of the layers of that narrative, he's making allies. It's not 250 guys anymore. We don't pay attention to. To that process of dealing that's taking place **[24:16] Speaker A:** that comes at the End of the story. That's the third thing that she does. She's storytelling. See how she's not. Stick to the history. **[24:22] Speaker A:** Stick to the history. Cortez doesn't say he's a God. The people around him says, you know, say he's got Diaz in the end writing because he's hearing people starting talking about he was considered a God, writes his story saying, hey, that didn't happen. So there's her first evidence where we're getting this information about them being gods is coming later. You're dismissing everybody that's saying it at the point that's a problem. **[24:56] Speaker A:** The next part of her critique is, what are the words that are actually being used here to say that they're being welcoming as gods? **[25:09] Speaker A:** In all history, when diplomats meet or elites meet, you know, if you've watched Game of Thrones, right? It's My Lord, my Grace, My Lord, my Grace. You know, whatever the word is. Your majesty, right? These are words that are above the common, but they're not God. **[25:40] Speaker A:** Right? So using these words, when a person says my Lord, are they saying, my Lord God, you know, my Lord. Well, you could say, oh, look, they're deifying these. These. These kings. **[25:53] Speaker A:** A European king might go, hey, I'm a sound special, but, hey, you know, my savior is above me. **[26:00] Speaker B:** Yeah, well, it's interact, but far be it to assume that you are or to assert that you are the divine. **[26:10] Speaker A:** But king's not going to do that. **[26:11] Speaker B:** No, not. **[26:13] Speaker A:** Not when anybody's looking. **[26:15] Speaker A:** Right? Not when anybody's looking. So she's going through these words that are being used, and she points to. There's many different ways that these words could be construed or used in a particular **[26:27] Speaker B:** context **[26:28] Speaker A:** or translated, and that they're being translated incorrectly or they're being translated in a way that is. Okay, you said it. I was going to say **[26:38] Speaker B:** that. I'm with **[26:39] Speaker A:** you. She's a pretty good storyteller, huh? She's pretty good at it, but, yeah, they're convenient. Oh, that's nice that you use that word. Really nice. It has 16 definitions, and you're using the 16th one. That's no good. Or you're not letting other historians go in there and say, why are you using the eighth definition or the second definition or the first definition that means he's a bum. That's what happens in history. If you can keep your narrative and your analysis as close to the accepted norm, people won't challenge you. **[27:15] Speaker A:** And Townsend is going at it with, again, Armesto leading the way. And here is Jared diamond saying, hey, there's a different way to be able to look at this. There are larger forces at play here. So the people at the time aren't saying it, but people in a generation after will say it. Now, perspective is important here, and we don't do this enough in history. **[27:45] Speaker A:** When somebody's writing something 40 years after something happened, and this is the trickiest thing in history, it is one of the things next to historiography, blew my mind, that you can have people writing closer to the event that are more wrong than people who will write about the event 100 years or 200 years or 300 years later. And that's what's happening here. These people are making a new story just 40 years after the event that totally dominates how this event's going to be looked at. And that if they just would have gone 20 years earlier, they would have had a more accurate. So it's going to take a hundred years or five hundred years to get more closely and accurate picture of how Cortes is able to conquer than the people that are just with the old people that actually did it. Because they're doing it for a different motivation than a historical account. **[28:46] Speaker A:** They're trying to sell an account. **[28:48] Speaker B:** It makes me think of my former dean, who is a police officer, and he used to say, I can't believe your whole profession is based on eyewitness accounts. That's the most unreliable account you can ever have. **[28:59] Speaker A:** Very good. Take a **[29:00] Speaker B:** car accident, have three people who witnessed it. You separate them, you're going to get three different stories, **[29:04] Speaker A:** right? So here we go. **[29:07] Speaker A:** The accounts. The what? The accounts you're taking are incorrect. The words you're using in terms of the interactions are incorrect. And because they're incorrect, all the actions taken by the Aztecs are now going to be construed in a particular way that is wrong. **[29:23] Speaker A:** Like sending gifts. Sending gifts to the court. As a Spanish approach, the Aztecs and Montezuma are going to be sending gifts, sending emissaries, everything that's going to look now that you think they're gods, that these people are making a pilgrimage to Cortez. But if you look at when people interact, that's what you do. You send gifts, you send emissaries. **[29:49] Speaker A:** Welcome or get out of here, depending on how you want it to be. This is a human interaction that is of equals, right? Montezuma is king of the kingdom. Cortez is coming to conquer him. The actions taken in that context are consistent, right? **[30:10] Speaker A:** But again, wrong account, wrong perspective, wrong motivation. Now you're attributing actions in a particular way and you're translating the words incorrectly. So her first, whole first critique is based on those things saying, we've known this has been iffy, but nobody has taken a stand on saying, this is not what happened. So that's her first critique, which are pretty strong. **[30:42] Speaker A:** You know, they're, they're pretty powerful. **[30:44] Speaker A:** Spoiler alert. Aztec still loose. **[30:49] Speaker B:** Yeah. **[30:51] Speaker B:** Going to keep leading us. **[30:53] Speaker A:** Well, I mean, that's the first thing. Right. **[30:55] Speaker B:** I mean, are **[30:55] Speaker A:** you **[30:56] Speaker B:** saying that the attacking narratives and then translation are all part of the first. **[31:02] Speaker A:** Yes. Right. So it's, it's, it's the accounts then going into the detail of the words and then the actions. That's all kind of like the first two things that she talks about. **[31:14] Speaker A:** Right. Those are the first two things and she melds them very well together in terms of going, okay, here's. Here are the problems with, with the narrative. Right. Her last conclusion. Right. The last thing she does, she leans heavily into Jared diamond because Aztecs are going to lose. **[31:36] Speaker B:** Yeah. **[31:36] Speaker A:** And it's going to be. It's going to be pretty nasty. **[31:39] Speaker A:** Right. So if they lose, why did they lose? Right. What happened that made the. This hit, this event occur the way it did? **[31:52] Speaker A:** The Spanish with a smaller group are going to win. But she says it's not because the Spanish are superhuman. They have certain advantages. **[32:03] Speaker B:** And I think she's also saying it's not because the Aztec are backwards. **[32:06] Speaker A:** Right, Right. That they're, that they're not coming from a point of weakness, but they are disadvantaged in terms of very, very specific and measurable ways. **[32:17] Speaker B:** But disadvantage is very different than backwards. And **[32:19] Speaker A:** I **[32:19] Speaker B:** think too often the narrative paints it that way, that it's an inferior population being defeated by a superior population. **[32:26] Speaker A:** And that's also part of the narrative. That's a tough one to get out, to weave out. Right. And that's why she talks about. In a pornographic relationship. **[32:36] Speaker A:** You're so invested that to pull out of that and to kind of tease out all these little points of superiority or inferiority or modernity or backwardsness or traditional. These things are so woven in, they're baked into the story, so there's no way to back out. But **[32:55] Speaker B:** they're also baked into the way that we talk. The idea of a population being so advanced, I see it over and over and over in student papers. I had no idea that they were so advanced compared to what or in what context? What are we saying? When you are determining that someone is actually surprisingly able to adapt and function in A particular situation. **[33:17] Speaker A:** Again, the idea of surprise. That surprise still isn't enough to get you over the ideological structure of whatever you're critiquing. It just becomes an exception or surprise. If it is a surprise, it should be able to chip away at the narrative. There's something not right here. Right. You've been given something that doesn't work. **[33:40] Speaker A:** Why are you surprised? Why are you accepting these people as human or fully human? Now that's what you're doing when you're saying surprised. It's like you are now entering a world of not equity, but looking at people for who they are and how they've adapted to their world, that you're surprised. Like, oh, this is a different world. **[34:03] Speaker A:** And in history, that's how it should be. You're entering a different place, a different space. It's not your own. So these people have all adapted in a particular way. But the Aztecs do lose. **[34:17] Speaker A:** And what are the fundamental components of the loss? That Townshend will say, this is where we should start talking from. Not this idea that you need some mythical story or some supernatural thing. There are things that the Spanish are going to do and have advantage that it's going to be a consequence to the Aztecs, and they will not be able to react. What is the first thing? And it's not so detailed in the article, but it's one that is a big part of my training because it happened all over Latin America. Cortez is building alliances with indigenous people that do not like the Aztecs. The Aztecs are a conquering force. So he's gonna go and make friends. He's gonna make friends either by making alliances straight up or needing to conquer somebody to get them to be on your side. **[35:11] Speaker A:** So he does that. His most important alliance is with Tlaxcala, which is the adversary of the Aztecs. The Aztecs are never able to conquer him. And I'm sure we'll have a nice little **[35:24] Speaker B:** picture **[35:25] Speaker A:** over our shoulders to show you where Cortez goes there first, makes alliances, conquers them, gets them on his side and saying, we're going to go after the Aztecs. Right? Because the Aztecs are the most powerful force. So for Townshend and for watching actions, if he's a God, why does he need allies? **[35:47] Speaker A:** He shouldn't. He just. Lightning bolts come out. Oh, wait, I'm being the storyteller. Lightning bolts come out of your eyes, right? It's like, you know, he needs to go get allies. Because if he doesn't have allies, thousands of them, he's Going to get beat. Right. He knows that even if he does win the Aztecs, defeats them and doesn't have any allies to rely on, then they're 200 dudes in a bigger set of indigenous people. And again, that's Latin American history. How they do that. We're not going to have a whole history lesson here. Took me a lot of years to kind of halfway know. So that's one thing. Allies. **[36:28] Speaker B:** Yeah. **[36:29] Speaker A:** That blows up the whole narrative story. Next thing that comes, and we can't get around those swords. **[36:37] Speaker B:** Yeah. But I do think that there's a really strong argument she makes in that the technology didn't just bowl them over. **[36:43] Speaker B:** They were responding to it. They were figuring out how things worked. They were mounting the best attacks and counter attacks that **[36:50] Speaker A:** they **[36:50] Speaker B:** could in face of the technology. **[36:52] Speaker B:** You know, she has the example of the zigzagging of canoes because cannons are going to fire. **[36:57] Speaker A:** Listen, a cannon, right? Wow. Wow. A cannon. **[37:02] Speaker A:** And the Spanish, you know, set it up the first time, you know, and you're like, stand right there, stand right there. Everybody stand right there. Okay, one, two, three, boom. You're gone. Indians are gonna figure out, like, yo, when that thing's lining up, get out of the way. **[37:18] Speaker A:** They're rational beings. Right? So. And **[37:22] Speaker B:** I think that that's a really important part to restore in the narrative because, you know, we sort of get through the conquest and then we start celebrating. Oh, yeah, and by the way, they did these great calendars and. And they did all of this mathematical and scientific stuff, you know, but unfortunately didn't help them out in the face of these superior beings who came in and conquered them. But I think that when you start building in that rational response to what they're facing, you're restoring balance **[37:46] Speaker A:** to **[37:46] Speaker B:** destroy where they. Well, I mean. And again, they lose. But you're restoring some of the basic fabric of what we know humans do, **[37:55] Speaker A:** how humans will react **[37:56] Speaker B:** to the story. **[37:57] Speaker A:** Right. So they have technology. The swords are better. She shows how cannons and horses, they can get around them. Horses only work in open space. **[38:08] Speaker A:** Did not work very well if they're in closed corners. You know, it actually worked against the Spanish when you had horses. Horses are like tanks, right? And tanks can't move around. You got them trapped. **[38:20] Speaker A:** So she's sewing. Here are some things that they have a technological advantage on. Cannons, horses, the metal armor kind of iffy because it gets really hot. So they actually start adopting a lot of the felt stuff. And the other armor that the Indians had, you know, cotton armor. **[38:39] Speaker A:** Because, again, the. The Weapons that the Aztecs have, the obsidian and all that, that can be stopped, right. You don't need metal to stop that. You need metal to stop more heavy kind of artillery, right? So she says, here are certain things that will work against the Aztecs, and the Spanish, particularly with the swords, are going to be able. With their techniques. These are conquistadors. They're trained military men. They know what they're doing and they have a shrewd leader. So you can have three or four guys take on hundreds and weaken them out, but you just got to keep throwing people at them, right? And eventually those four will fall. So the Spanish did fall, horses did fall. So right there, gods. Gods don't die. So there's a lot of these contradictions that are happening, right? **[39:32] Speaker A:** So, yes, the guns and the steel are going to be a big deal, but ultimately, what is going to destroy the Aztecs? And again, when the city is besieged, right, disease is going to take them out. There's no getting around that. There. There's no way. And again, maybe the Aztecs are going to think this is God's, you know, the gods are killing us. **[39:57] Speaker B:** Which I think is fair to point out that when the Black Death happened in Europe, that was their same explanation. There's, you know, God is punishing us. And so that's not, again, and I don't want that description to be an. Of the ring of the Aztecs or again, feeding into that story of inferiority. Oh, what silly people. To think that this disease clearly brought by the Spanish is actually brought by gods as punishment. **[40:20] Speaker A:** Well, they wouldn't have known that was brought by the Spanish. They don't know that. The same thing with COVID Right. We have people today in 2020 that did believe that it's, you know, some divine intervention, punishment on our society. But here is Townsend again, using Jared Diamond's approach. What can be measured. **[40:47] Speaker B:** Yeah, and I think that's such an important part of what she's doing because she's, you know, we've talked a lot about narrative and we've even framed all of our lectures as storyteller, historian. But to be able to go in and say, this is what we can see and this is what we can measure. **[41:01] Speaker B:** It's not that not just the what we know, but how we know it. And I think that's such an important part when you're deconstructing a narrative and hopefully when you're constructing a narrative. **[41:12] Speaker A:** And that's what historians are supposed to do. **[41:14] Speaker B:** Yeah, **[41:14] Speaker A:** that's our job. **[41:16] Speaker A:** And what we're doing here, we are standing behind Townsend, right, to show through this very, very well done article, showing you the questions that she's bringing up about this particular event. She's using two other historians that have broken barriers at the time that she's writing. So you can see the historiographical progression of that. Right? This little article is a gem in terms of all the things that we want you to learn in history. **[41:52] Speaker A:** This is what it is. You have an event, the conquest. It has a story and a narrative, a story and a narrative that most people know is not true. **[42:01] Speaker B:** Right. And I would even bet that after watching our lecture and reading this article, there are still going to be some of you who are like, yeah, but how could he not have been kids of waddle. Like, how does, how did. That's. But like how you know you're going to get stuck there because it is, it's that attachment that we have. **[42:19] Speaker A:** And you're going to go, and we're going to bring up, how about Captain Cook **[42:23] Speaker B:** again, **[42:24] Speaker A:** how many times, how many things we can bring up all kinds of stories that follow this exact same trajectory. And just so happens Europeans are always the gods and the people of color are always the ones that are buffoons, **[42:40] Speaker B:** awestruck, right? I mean, they're sort of slack jawed, standing in awe, like, oh, thank goodness you're here. And **[42:48] Speaker A:** those blue eyes, those blue eyes just have it. They're magical. **[42:54] Speaker B:** But I also really appreciate how Camila Townsend ends her article when she talks about, you know, kind of that, yeah, we're not really sending our kids to the schools. We'll send our servants kids to the schools. We know that this is all one big scam. You know that even as a conquered population, the resilience of the Mexica was still there. And understanding that power relationship that's been established is one that is frank, fraught with tensions, is something that we also, in that very hopefully now buried narrative, completely ignore. **[43:31] Speaker A:** And, and that's an important point, right? She ends with that. She ends with, here's the society 40, 50, 60 years later and you have some of the population who've adopted and sided with the Spanish in terms of control. **[43:46] Speaker A:** And then politically the other people are ostracized, right? So you still see like, where's the gods, right? If they're gods, gods are gods forever, **[43:57] Speaker B:** right? **[43:58] Speaker A:** So she's showing, look at how this society develops over time. **[44:02] Speaker A:** You have Spanish intermarrying with the Aztec elite. They're having mixed race kids. Some of them are going to Be half Aztec, half Spanish. They become Spanish leaders. Who's that person? **[44:14] Speaker A:** Right. Are they part God? Right. Something's happening here with how the story, how the society plays out and how it's organizing itself. But that narrative of that first event, just like the Mayflower at Plymouth, just whatever it is, the power of that single event defines an entire historiographical perspective to the day. **[44:41] Speaker A:** And world will cast a shadow over how we look at everything. And it's going to be hard for indigenous people anywhere on the planet to reach the status of fully human person because of that beginning of this story. And that's kind of like, if you remember, the last lecture, where she didn't know where I was going to go. Right. With the ecology thing, when I said where you start your story is as powerful sometimes as where you want to go with your story. **[45:13] Speaker B:** And not everybody's seen that lecture because that's a history 103 and this is a history **[45:18] Speaker A:** 104. **[45:18] Speaker B:** I rarely know where he's going to go. He catches me a lot. **[45:22] Speaker A:** But the beginning of the story here clearly is going to taint everybody else's perspective. **[45:29] Speaker B:** Oh, absolutely. **[45:30] Speaker A:** And Townsend is just saying stop. **[45:32] Speaker B:** And **[45:33] Speaker A:** she does it in three rational, logical ways. She is not saying that this is the truth, but what she is saying is, I know that's not true and that here are three powerful ways to break down that story and we need to confront them in order. **[45:53] Speaker B:** And what I would encourage you, as you read the article, to think about is the evidence that she's presenting. Because it's one thing to say that's not true, just reject it. But it's another to bring in all sorts of chronological evidence and primary source evidence and to start looking at literally sort of the records that we have. So she's not saying that's not true. Knock it off without saying, if you want to challenge me, deal with this bucket load of evidence that I'm bringing. **[46:26] Speaker A:** And that is what good history is. **[46:28] Speaker B:** It's the best. **[46:29] Speaker A:** It's the best history. It's why we like being historians. **[46:31] Speaker B:** Yeah. This is really **[46:32] Speaker A:** fun **[46:32] Speaker B:** to do with **[46:32] Speaker A:** you. Wait, okay. I'm not a historian anymore. It's a great story. And if the Aztecs just would have done two or three things differently, they still would have lost. The disease is going to get them in the end. **[46:48] Speaker B:** Yeah. **[46:49] Speaker A:** And that's what we know. **[46:53] Speaker A:** Right. That's good.