The Spanish invasion of Mexico in 1519, which led to the end of the Aztec Empire, was one of the most influential events in the history of the modern Atlantic world. But equally consequential, as this volume makes clear, were the ways the Conquest was portrayed. In essays spanning five centuries and three continents, The Conquest of Mexico: 500 Years of Reinventions explores how politicians, writers, artists, activists, and others have strategically reimagined the Conquest to influence and manipulate perceptions within a wide variety of controversies and debates, including those touching on indigeneity, nationalism, imperialism, modernity, and multiculturalism. Writing from a range of perspectives and disciplines, the authors demonstrate that the Conquest of Mexico, whose significance has ever been marked by fundamental ambiguity, has consistently influenced how people across the modern Atlantic world conceptualize themselves and their societies. After considering the looming, ubiquitous role of the Conquest in Mexican thought and discourse since the sixteenth century, the contributors go farther afield to examine the symbolic relevance of the Conquest in contexts as diverse as Tudor England, Bourbon France, postimperial Spain, modern Latin America, and even contemporary Hollywood. Highlighting the extent to which the Spanish-Aztec conflict inspired historical reimaginings, these essays reveal how the Conquest became such an iconic event-and a perennial medium by which both Europe and the Americas have, for centuries, endeavored to understand themselves as well as their relationship to others. A valuable contribution to ongoing efforts to demythologize and properly memorialize the Spanish-Aztec War of 1519-21, this volume also aptly illustrates how we make history of the past and how that history-making shapes our present-and possibly our future.

A descendant of both Spanish settlers and Nahua (Aztec) rulers, Don Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl (ca. 1578-1650) was an avid collector of indigenous pictorial and alphabetic texts and a prodigious chronicler of the history of pre-conquest and conquest-era Mexico. His magnum opus, here for the first time in English translation, is one of the liveliest, most accessible, and most influential accounts of the rise and fall of Aztec Mexico derived from indigenous sources and memories and written from a native perspective. Composed in the first half of the seventeenth century, a hundred years after the arrival of the Spanish conquerors in Mexico, the History of the Chichimeca Nation is based on native accounts but written in the medieval chronicle style. It is a gripping tale of adventure, romance, seduction, betrayal, war, heroism, misfortune, and tragedy. Written at a time when colonization and depopulation were devastating indigenous communities, its vivid descriptions of the cultural sophistication, courtly politics, and imperial grandeur of the Nahua world explicitly challenged European portrayals of native Mexico as a place of savagery and ignorance. Unpublished for centuries, it nonetheless became an important source for many of our most beloved and iconic memories of the Nahuas, widely consulted by scholars of Spanish American history, politics, literature, anthropology, and art. The manuscript of the History, lost in the 1820s, was only rediscovered in the 1980s. This volume is not only the first-ever English translation, but also the first edition in any language derived entirely from the original manuscript. Expertly rendered, with introduction and notes outlining the author's historiographical legacy, this translation at long last affords readers the opportunity to absorb the history of one of the Americas' greatest indigenous civilizations as told by one of its descendants.

A descendant of both Spanish settlers and Nahua (Aztec) rulers, Don Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl (ca. 1578-1650) was an avid collector of indigenous pictorial and alphabetic texts and a prodigious chronicler of the history of pre-conquest and conquest-era Mexico. His magnum opus, here for the first time in English translation, is one of the liveliest, most accessible, and most influential accounts of the rise and fall of Aztec Mexico derived from indigenous sources and memories and written from a native perspective. Composed in the first half of the seventeenth century, a hundred years after the arrival of the Spanish conquerors in Mexico, the History of the Chichimeca Nation is based on native accounts but written in the medieval chronicle style. It is a gripping tale of adventure, romance, seduction, betrayal, war, heroism, misfortune, and tragedy. Written at a time when colonization and depopulation were devastating indigenous communities, its vivid descriptions of the cultural sophistication, courtly politics, and imperial grandeur of the Nahua world explicitly challenged European portrayals of native Mexico as a place of savagery and ignorance. Unpublished for centuries, it nonetheless became an important source for many of our most beloved and iconic memories of the Nahuas, widely consulted by scholars of Spanish American history, politics, literature, anthropology, and art. The manuscript of the History, lost in the 1820s, was only rediscovered in the 1980s. This volume is not only the first-ever English translation, but also the first edition in any language derived entirely from the original manuscript. Expertly rendered, with introduction and notes outlining the author's historiographical legacy, this translation at long last affords readers the opportunity to absorb the history of one of the Americas' greatest indigenous civilizations as told by one of its descendants.

Modern Mexico derives many of its richest symbols of national heritage and identity from the Aztec legacy, even as it remains a predominantly Spanish-speaking, Christian society. This volume argues that the composite, neo-Aztec flavor of Mexican identity was, in part, a consequence of active efforts by indigenous elites after the Spanish conquest to grandfather ancestral rights into the colonial era. By emphasizing the antiquity of their claims before Spanish officials, native leaders extended the historical awareness of the colonial regime into the pre-Hispanic past, and therefore also the themes, emotional contours, and beginning points of what we today understand as 'Mexican history'. This emphasis on ancient roots, moreover, resonated with the patriotic longings of many creoles, descendants of Spaniards born in Mexico. Alienated by Spanish scorn, creoles associated with indigenous elites and studied their histories, thereby reinventing themselves as Mexico's new 'native' leadership and the heirs to its prestigious antiquity.

Modern Mexico derives many of its richest symbols of national heritage and identity from the Aztec legacy, even as it remains a predominantly Spanish-speaking, Christian society. This volume argues that the composite, neo-Aztec flavor of Mexican identity was, in part, a consequence of active efforts by indigenous elites after the Spanish conquest to grandfather ancestral rights into the colonial era. By emphasizing the antiquity of their claims before Spanish officials, native leaders extended the historical awareness of the colonial regime into the pre-Hispanic past, and therefore also the themes, emotional contours, and beginning points of what we today understand as 'Mexican history'. This emphasis on ancient roots, moreover, resonated with the patriotic longings of many creoles, descendants of Spaniards born in Mexico. Alienated by Spanish scorn, creoles associated with indigenous elites and studied their histories, thereby reinventing themselves as Mexico's new 'native' leadership and the heirs to its prestigious antiquity.