I am intrigued by the whole power dynamic contained in the occurrences between the Spanish and the Mexica and the role of power in creating trauma, individual and collective. These were two powerful empires, the Spanish and the Mexica, and each was the dominant force in their respective parts of the world. In Spain, Queen Isabel and King Fernando had just driven the last Muslims out of Spain and forced conversion to the Catholic faith on all the remaining Jews (and there were also still some Muslims still hanging around, also converted by force), many of whom died anyway in the Inquisition Spain was now a fully Catholic country, unified and speaking one language, Castilian, or modern Spanish.
The Aztecs were now fully in control of their region of Mexico, having defeated and subjugated neighbouring tribes while remaining in a state of perpetual warfare with others, all of whom kept them in a steady supply of sacrificial victims. They were feared, respected and hated throughout the region. They also excelled in building beautiful, well-ordered and clean cities with magnificent temples and palaces and gardens. Lacking a written language, metal, and the use of the wheel, their accomplishments were still so impressive that even the invading Spanish, having all those advantages but no matching achievements, were left amazed and envious.
Two proud and arrogant nations facing each other. One the invader, the other the soon-to-be-conquered-and-usurped. Only the superior military power of the Spanish gave them the advantage, though they believed that God was helping them. This is, for people who live in the twenty-first century, of course, hard to swallow, and given what they had done to the faith of Jesus Christ it is really hard to imagine God giving them any kind of preferential treatment. I don't imagine that he would have cared much about the Aztecs' stake in the game either, given their propensity for human sacrifice.
In order to appreciate the use and abuse of power in all our human endeavours it might be helpful to recall that most of our history as humans has been brutal, violent, ugly and full of hate and terror. The lovely material wealth and comfort, social democracy and liberal values of freedom, equality and human rights that we now take for granted simply didn't exist, not until this past generation or two since the end of the Second World War. The Spanish won the greater part of the Iberian Peninsula through harsh and hardly-fought campaigns of warfare. Preceding them would be millennia of violent armed conflict as tribes and nations, including the Romans, the Goths and the Visigoths and others each swept into the Iberian Peninsula and wreaked havoc, death and bloodshed, mostly on the innocent.
By the same token, so the various tribes of Mexico fought, slaughtered and murdered one another all in the quest for land, territory and power. Life was hard and very short. There were then, as now, no guarantees in life, no justice and precious little hope. It is hard for those of us who fret and stress over first world problems to even imagine what it must have been like: that life was always a matter of survival. That if you and your family could live to see another day then you were doing okay.
Threats on one's survival and safety were not taken lightly. Any land or territory that was gained was a rare treasure to be held, cherished and defended to the death. The veil between life and death was very fragile and flimsy and conflict between nations, tribes and armies was the constant norm. Death and killing were taken as ordinary daily occurrences. Everyone must have lived in a state of low-level and chronic trauma, but didn't have the luxury to pause in the middle of sowing the crops or reaping the harvest or labouring in the shop to even take stock of their inner lives, much less seek psychological help, and even less, to reasonably expect that such help would even be available or conceivable five hundred years ago.
As a collective humanity, we have collectively staggered forward, often gone into retreat, hobbled by this collective trauma from the abuses of power that have historically stripped us of our most naked humanity, and only by seeking those quiet places, and heeding the voices of the prophets we would prefer to behead, burn at the stake or lock in mental hospital quiet rooms, are we able to hear that still quiet inner whisper, that voice of the divine, that gentle persistent voice of God telling us that we are more than this, and that we can even now crawl over to the waters of healing.
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