13AUG 2021 marked the 500th anniversary of the fall of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlán, now the site of Mexico City. The siege culminating in its surrender was the beginning of three centuries of Spanish colonization in Mexico, where the country is acknowledging the anniversary without celebration. Hernán Cortés, the Spanish commander who led the conquest, is recognized as the originator of Mexico’s identity as a mixed-race nation. “We were all born from the conquest, no longer Aztecs, no longer Spanish, but Indian-Hispanic-Americans, mestizos,” wrote Carlos Fuentes, the late Mexican author. “We are what we are because Hernán Cortés, for good or for bad, did what he did.” Meanwhile in Mexico City, workers are erecting a 50-foot-tall replica of the emblematic Templo Mayor, the main sanctuary of the Aztecs to showcase what the region was like before the conquest. “The so-called conquest was accomplished with the sword and the cross,” said Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador a few months after taking office. “Thousands of people were murdered during this period. A culture was imposed, one civilization on top of another, to the point where Catholic churches were constructed on top of the temples of pre-Hispanic peoples.”
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