The Man Who Invented Aztec Crystal Skulls. Jane MacLaren Walsh

      Mexico is a country immersed in its ancient history, despite the concerted efforts of its European conquerors to obliterate the past. In subjugating these new lands, the Spaniards destroyed the architectural monuments they initially admired and went on to exploit the people who had created them.

      At first astounded by the beauty and majesty of Tenochtitlán, the Aztec capital, the Spanish conquistadors compared it to imaginary castles of chivalric romances. Bernal Díaz del Castillo, a soldier in Hernán Cortés’s army, wrote appreciatively about the Spaniards’ first view of Moctezuma’s capital.

      During the morning we arrived at a broad Causeway and continued our march towards Iztapalapa, and when we saw so many cities and villages built in the water, and other great towns on dry land and that straight and level causeway going towards Mexico, we were amazed and said that it was like the enchantments they tell of in the legend of Amadís, on account of the great towers and cues and buildings rising from the water, and all built of masonry. And some of our soldiers even asked whether the things that we saw were not a dream. (Díaz 1956: 190–91)

      The architectural and artistic remnants of the precontact cultures continued to fascinate and repel the Spaniards exploring the New World throughout the nearly three centuries of colonial rule, extending from 1521 until the beginning of Mexico’s War of Independence in 1810. The conquistadors were horrified by the human sacrifices performed by the Aztecs. Hernán Cortés’s first letter to the Spanish crown described this practice as a “most horrid and abominable custom.” Providing more details, he adds,

      Whenever they wish to ask something of the idols, in order that their plea may find more acceptance, they take many girls and boys and even adults, and in the presence of the idols they open their chests while they are still alive and take out their hearts and entrails and burn them before the idols, offering the smoke as sacrifice. Some of us have seen this, and they say it is the most terrible and frightful thing they have ever witnessed. (Pagden and Elliott 1986: 35)

      Human sacrifice and other customs considered pagan by the Spaniards and the Catholic Church engendered a debate in Spain about what to do with the native peoples of the conquered lands. Finally, it was decided to undertake the conversion of the Indians to the Catholic faith, and to send priests to accomplish this task. The first to arrive in Mexico—a group of twelve, like the apostles—landed in 1524.

      As they Christianized Mexico, baptizing hundreds of thousands, the priests were supported by the Spanish conquistadors and recent settlers. These Spaniards received grants of land still occupied by the villages and towns of native Mexicans. The expectation was that the Indians would continue to work the land and pay tribute to the new landowners in exchange for their education in Christianity. Essentially Spain took over Aztec tribute lists, and the Indian population continued to pay tithes to their overlords.

      Later the Spanish Catholic church would establish an office of the Inquisition in Mexico to deal with the natives’ ongoing attachment to their old gods. That Holy Office conducted trials against those it considered idolatrous heretics. Anyone accused who did not confess voluntarily to the charges was tortured and sometimes burnt alive at the stake. Ironically, the Spaniards did not consider such public executions a “most horrid and abominable custom.”

      The chilling rituals of the sixteenth century on both sides of the cultural divide eventually receded in memory as Spain colonized Mexico. North Americans and Europeans had little idea of what occurred during the several hundred years after the Conquest since they were denied access. Spain effectively closed the country to anyone other than Spaniards. A result of Mexico’s isolation from the rest of the world was that Spain had free rein to hide and even obliterate the country’s pre-Hispanic accomplishments, in particular its architectural monuments and written history.

      From the fall of the Aztec Empire in 1521 until approximately 1670, the Spaniards systematically destroyed and buried all the precontact monuments that they could find, as part of their project of Christianizing Mexico (Bernal 1980: 36). In 1531 the bishop of Mexico, Juan de Zumárraga, wrote to his Franciscan brethren, “We are much busied with great and constant labor to convert the infidel … five hundred temples razed to the ground, and above twenty thousand idols of the devils they worshipped smashed and burned” (García Icazbalceta 1881: 311; Bernal 1980: 36). Clearly Zumárraga thought that the old and new religions could not coexist peacefully. One had to be destroyed before the other could truly take hold.

      In pursuit of Spain’s goal of Christianizing Mexico, Bishop Diego de Landa of the Yucatán became a zealous destroyer of Maya ritual books—the codices that elucidated Maya history, religion, and science. Despite the fact that Spaniards kept meticulous records of their activities, it remains unclear how many of these invaluable cultural documents he succeeded in burning, whether tens, hundreds, or even thousands. Some scholars have compared the resulting loss of knowledge to that caused by the accidental burning of the library of Alexandria in 48 BC, fifteen hundred years earlier. However, Diego de Landa “simultaneously scoured the Yucatecan peninsula looking for stelae from which to draw the history of the ancient kingdom of Mayapan” (Cañizares-Esguerra 2001: 67), clear evidence of the polarized feelings of repulsion and attraction the Spaniards had toward Mexicans and