Aztec civilization has been indeed a permanent theme of scientific research, controversy, and fanciful hypotheses throughout the centuries. Professor Keen’s purpose in this book is precisely that of studying many of the images that have appeared as interpretations of the Aztec past. He has undertaken such a task from the most varied points of view, including early debates, history and the chronicles, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, literature, and art.
But this work is not a mere presentation of the great variety of Aztec images in Western thought. Benjamin Keen has delved into the causes and motives that help explain the appearance of the different interpretations in their respective historical moments. In other words, in his evaluation of the diverse images he establishes a sort of dialogue with the circumstances and trends of thought which prevailed or were controversial at each time. Thus, belonging to the field of the history of ideas, this book finds a place in what the author and others have described as a sociology of knowledge, or, if one prefers it, social and even economic history of the historical interpretations.
It is obvious that Keen’s research does not pretend to be exhaustive. Nonetheless, in his six-hundred-odd pages he analyzes an impressive number of attempts at interpretation of the Aztec civilization on the basis of abundant sources and with his eye riveted on the causes that can make the various images understandable. In order to achieve this, he adopts a well structured scheme. First, he devotes two chapters to an exposition of the origins and historical reality of the “People of the Sun” and of their peculiar world view. The next thirteen chapters, which complete the book, are focused on the presentation of the different images within a fundamentally chronological framework.
It is worth noting that in the first two chapters, where Keen endeavors to summarize what is known today about the Aztecs and their world view, he elaborates implicitly his own image of the ancient Mexicans. And as could be expected, on producing his own Aztec image, he formulates judgments of critical evaluation. He accepts, for example, the importance of the rich documentation in the Nahuatl language and quotes a number of texts following the translations of Ángel María Garibay and of the present writer. But the interpretation which Keen has conceived of Aztec culture leads him occasionally to different evaluations of the meaning and implications which Garibay and I have perceived in certain texts. My comment on this point confirms the central thesis of this book: in the long run historiographic endeavors end up in the elaboration of images. It is superfluous to state that the latter, notwithstanding the critical sense with which they may have been formed, reflect the circumstances, the motivations, and the points of view of their authors.
In the following thirteen chapters Professor Keen is actually concerned with the elucidation of the long sequence of Aztec images. To achieve his purpose he has distributed them under the following points of reference: “Europe discovers the Aztecs,” “The Aztecs and the Great Debate,” “The Aztecs in Late Renaissance Thought,” “The Baroque Vision of the Aztecs,” “The Eyes of Reason,” “The Aztecs Transfigured,” “Montezuma’s Dinner,” “Farewell to Fantasy,” “From Orozco y Berra to Seler,” “The Return of Cuauhtémoc,” and “The Plumed Serpent.”
“Europe discovers the Aztecs” (the title of Chapter III) discusses the images which were born as a first consequence of the discovery and conquest of Mexico. Pertinently, on evaluating the writings of men like Hernán Cortés and Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Keen also makes room for what the Aztecs themselves expressed about the Spanish invaders. And he takes into consideration, among other things, the reactions of Europeans, such as those of Peter Martyr d’Angleria and of Albrecht Dürer, when the latter contemplated in Brussels the Aztec works of art sent by Cortés to Charles V.
Chapters IV and V are especially pertinent because in them attention is given to the Aztec images resulting from the great debate on the rational and moral capacity of the Indians. Among the interpretations analyzed are those of men who, for different reasons, sided with the cause of the holders of encomiendas. In the same way the ideas of their opponents, including of course those of Las Casas, receive careful treatment. The writings of well known figures like Motolinía, Durán and Sahagún, are reviewed here as holding an intermediate position. Finally, the native chroniclers—such as Alvarado Tezozómoc, Muñoz Camargo, and Pomar—make their appearance as defenders of their own world of tradition.
“The Aztecs in Late Renaissance Thought, 1550-1600” (Chapter VI) is a good example of the wealth of information penetratingly an alyzed which characterizes this book. The list of authors taken into account includes, among others, Giordano Ziletti, the Italian editor of Gómara. The discussion likewise includes Giovanni Bautista Ramusio, Michele Zapullo, Giovanni Botero, Thomasco Porcachi, Girolamo Benzonio, Urbain Chauveton, Jacques Auguste de Thou, François de Belleforest, André Thevét and many others whose names are certainly not familiar to many students of the Aztec past.
Unfortunately space limitations prevent us from entering into a detailed analysis of the above mentioned chapters. And the same must be applied to the chapters in which the Baroque vision, the eyes of reason, the Romantic transfiguration, Morgan’s approach, and modern scientific studies, give way to a parade of images which seems almost unending but never fails to interest.
We have decided, therefore, to discuss briefly the contents of the last two chapters: “The Return of Cuauhtémoc” and “The Plumed Serpent.” The first opens with the birth of Indigenismo in modern Mexico and continues with the affair described by Keen as “the battle of the bones,” the polemics surrounding the pretended discovery of Cuauhtémoc’s remains as claimed by Eulalia Guzmán. The theme of Indigenismo—as a forge of Aztec images—leads the author to further critical evaluation of a series of different and often specific interpretations. Among them are those of Mexicans such as Manuel Gamio, Miguel Othón de Mendizábal, Alfonso Caso, Wigberto Jiménez Moreno, Ángel María Garibay, Laurette Séjourné, Ignacio Bernal, Miguel León-Portilla, and of many others like the foreigners George Vaillant, Jacques Soustelle, Ernst Mengin, Walter Krickeberg, and Friedrich Katz.
Keen undoubtedly strives to be objective in his appreciations and here—as is the case generally in his work—he demonstrates that he has grasped the images which he analyzes. In passing, we will mention a curious lapsus which seems to denote that at times Professor Keen has worked in isolation from other contemporary researchers. On page 490 he states that the Englishman J. Eric S. Thompson is an American! And his having included contemporary research under the title of “The Return of Cuauhtémoc” does not seem especially fortunate to us; perhaps in doing this he was concerned with keeping up the attention of the reader. We must remark nonetheless, in Keen’s favor, that his book, regardless of captions like the latter, has the power to captivate the interest of the specialist and the layman.
The last chapter, “The Plumed Serpent” (a good title to connote art alluding to Quetzalcoatl), deals with the images that have appeared within the field of aesthetic creation. In it the author reviews plastic in terpretations from Diego Rivera and Jean Chariot up to the studies of Toscano, Covarrubias, Westheim, and Justino Fernández. This is one of the finest chapters of the book.
The present work by Benjamin Keen may be classed as an unusual and highly valuable piece of research. It portrays the world of Aztec civilization as reflected in innumerable images conceived at different epochs and with extremely different approaches. The author has produced a contribution to the history of ideas which also seeks explanations in terms of a wisely applied sociology of historical interpretation. We predict that this book will receive a place of distinction in the field of Mexicanist historiography.
