Gratitude 122

I am going to begin this post with the lyrics to the 1972 song by British progressive rock band Procul Harum, "Conquistador"

Here is the YouTube link, Gentle Reader, as I think you should hear it while reading this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FW2KN7Tz89s

"Conquistador"

Conquistador your stallion stands in need of company
And like some angel's haloed brow
You reek of purity
I see your armour-plated breast has long since lost its sheen
And in your death mask face
There are no signs which can be seen
And though I hoped for something to find
I could see no maze to unwind
Conquistador a vulture sits upon your silver shield
And in your rusty scabbard now
The sand has taken seed
And though your jewel-encrusted blade has not been plundered still
The sea has washed across your face
And taken of its fill
And though I hoped for something to find
I could see no maze to unwind
Conquistador there is no time
I must pay my respect
And though I came to jeer at you
I leave now with regret
And as the gloom begins to fall
I see there is no aureole
And though you came with sword held high
You did not conquer, only die
And though I hoped for something to find
I could see no maze to unwind

Now, Gentle Reader, while you are reading and, hopefully, listening to this, let us imagine why these lyrics were written.  They could refer to a hero, a teacher, a mentor, perhaps even a lover; but clearly this is an anthem of disillusionment, disappointment and cynicism.  The hero has shown his true colours, he is but a weak and very ordinary human.  He has lived up to, neither his promise, nor to any of the lofty hopes that were projected onto him. 

Now, let us return to the original conquistadores.  Not a rock band, but the band of adventurous young men in search of gold, blood, heroism and immortality, all crowded together on the little ship ailing from Spain to the coast of Mexico in 1519.  Let us try to imagine life for them on the open sea, for who knows how many weeks.  They left Spain in February and arrived in March in Mexico.  They probably came mostly from reasonably prosperous, lower-caste aristocratic families.  They nurtured and were nurtured on myths and illusions of knighthood and heroism.   For mentors and role models they must have celebrated the crusading nights of the Middle Ages and knighthood and its twisted and unhealthy representation of masculinity.  They harboured images of nobility, honour and purity.  These were likely mostly very young men or boys, late teens and early twenties.

They likely harboured a deep devotion to the Virgin and the Holy Catholic Church.  They must have honoured and endorsed in full the sadistic cruelties of the Inquisition, and were all united in their hatred of Jews and Muslims.  They might have been, at best, marginally literate, but I would doubt that any of them ever read so much as one page in their still brief short little lives.

Since the Spanish in those days had an aversion toward soap and water they must all have stank to high heaven.  One could imagine that only the strongest ocean breeze could make life on the boat tolerable to the nostrils.

These callow, idealistic, greedy and lust-driven youths helped unleash onto the Mexica, or Aztecs, one long collective nightmare.  They would, of course, have been horrified by all the human sacrifices, giving not one single thought to a single burnt heretic, witch or Jew screaming in agony as the flames did their work, and there is absolutely no doubt that all of those men must have each seen at least one public execution or auto de fe in Mama Espana (Mother Spain).  To their surprise, they were received by the native people as gods, as the fulfilment of an ancient prophecy of a visitation from the gods.   These heroes and gods carried in their own stinking and unwashed bodies such diseases as the peoples of the Americas had no built-in immunity and within less than a generation more than sixty percent of them were dead by imported disease alone.

As faithful Catholics they wanted to honour Holy Church and convert the heathen to their degraded form of Christianity.  As wannabe knights they saw no contradiction between following the Prince of Peace, the Lamb of God who commanded his disciples to not lift their hand nor any weapon in their own self-defence, and taking up sword and musket and slaughtering without mercy the heathen Aztec.  If they embraced chastity, this courtesy was reserved only to high-born Spanish women.  These men likely all lost their virginity to their favourite prostitutes in Spain, then went on to dehumanize and regard as whores the women of the Mexica.

So, the first ancestors of modern Mexico were conceived inside indigenous wombs of disempowered Mexica women violated by rape.