What exactly went wrong in Mexico???? Días’ account of the conquest

The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico is an interesting read.  Días chronicles his time as a conquistador in the sixteenth century providing a deeply entailed primary source for what occurred in Mexico.  However, the tone of the book was different from other primary documents I have read.  Usually there is an air of superiority that comes through that makes the author seem as though he knows everything which is going on and seems to write as if he is out of his own body and just observing.  With Días’ work it was much more casual.  I don’t mean this to sound strange but as I was reading is was like listening to one of my uncles tell a crazy story about what he did when he was in the military.  But I liked how it was more casual and he included how bad things were it made it seem more real then a piece of propaganda sent back to the Spanish homeland to encourage people to invest and settle in the new world.  Another aspect I liked were the inserted notes about historical facts.  I found it broke up the monotony and filled in places that were not so well explained by Días.

However, there were some aspects of the work that I took issue with.  The biggest being when it was written.  For it to be such a detailed and extensive volume writing it 30 plus years afterward does not seem quite right.  There has to be holes and places were he could not remember what happened and just filled things in, I don’t know about everyone else but I have a hard time remembering things in such vivid detail.  And I will admit that he did mention in some sections that he had forgotten what happened but it would stand to reason more than a little had to have been embellished or influenced from other sources.  But hey, maybe the guy had an incredible memory you never know.

Other issues I had did not so much have to do with Días but with how the Spanish preserved things that were happening around them.  It bothers me to no end how he keeps repeating how they were there to civilize the natives I mean even Caesar would have been impressed by the construction of Mexico.  Another issue what the confusion between human sacrifice and cannibalism it  seems in the book that they automatically assumed if they were sacrificing they were being cannibals as well which was not always the case.  I’m not an expert but I don’t think human was mane part of the diet in South America.  And as I was talking to a friend of mine about the book the Spanish themselves perform a symbolic act of cannibalism when they take mass………. but that is whole other argument.  The last thing that I found strange was Montezuma himself.  He knew what hell was about to walk into his territory and he tried to avert it but actually made it worse.  In reading how he sent messengers offering gold to Cortes if he would go no further just made the Spanish thirst for wealth worse……its almost to crazy to imagine what was going through Montezuma’s mind and Cortes manipulated the situation to no end so he could get to Mexico.