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The fall of Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec Empire, was an important event in the Spanish conquest of the empire.It occurred in 1521 following extensive negotiations between local factions and Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés.
The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico (Spanish title: Visión de los vencidos: Relaciones indígenas de la conquista; lit."Vision of the Defeated: Indigenous relations of the conquest") is a book by Mexican historian Miguel León-Portilla, translating selections of Nahuatl-language accounts of the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire.
The Aztecs [a] (/ ˈ æ z t ɛ k s / AZ-teks) were a Mesoamerican civilization that flourished in central Mexico in the post-classic period from 1300 to 1521. The Aztec people included different ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl language and who dominated large parts of Mesoamerica from the 14th to the 16th centuries.
The aftermath of the Spanish conquest, including the Aztecs' struggle to preserve their cultural identity, is the subject of the Mexican feature film, The Other Conquest, directed by Salvador Carrasco. Historian Daniele Bolelli did an in-depth coverage of the Spanish conquest over four episodes of his History on Fire podcast. [107]
The word Aztec in modern usage would not have been used by the people themselves. It has variously been used to refer to the Aztecs or Triple Alliance, the Nahuatl-speaking people of central Mexico prior to the Spanish conquest, or specifically the Mexica ethnicity of the Nahuatl-speaking tribes (from tlaca). [7]
In Spanish, the book is called “Tu sueño imperios han sido” — a line borrowed from a baroquely beautiful poem that means “your dreams empires have been.”
The Spanish version of the incident contains several differing possible motives, while the Aztec version says the Spaniards were enticed into action by the gold the Aztecs were wearing, prompting an Aztec rebellion against the orders of Moctezuma.
Thus the Aztec Empire had its largest geographical extent when the Spaniards arrived in 1519. Some sources claim that Moctezuma II, and the Aztecs, believed the arriving Spanish to be linked to the supposed return of an exiled god, Quetzlcoatl, who was supposed to return pale and bearded.