Bitter Chocolate (4 page)

There wasn't much interest in anthropology amongst the conquistadors. They were ravenous tourists, looking to see what they could cart away from the New World. But Cortés had also brought with him men of the cloth, whose job it was to convert the Indians. The priests also served as record-keepers, methodically investigating and describing the customs and habits of the
native people. Among their most enduring discoveries would be the processing of cocoa beans, first into an edible paste, then into the various potions that were so popular in Meso-America.

The new Spanish settlement of Vera Cruz was in the middle of the former heartland of the Olmec and was one of the chief cocoa-producing regions of Mexico. Written records indicate that Cortés was obliged by native customs to drink
cacahualtl
. Though he never developed a taste for the New World beverage, he did start to understand its worth.

Cocoa as legal tender dated back to the Maya and was so entrenched in the monetary system of the Americas that counterfeiting cocoa beans out of painted clay or stone had become a thriving industry. Goods could be priced in units of cocoa: a slave cost 100 beans; the services of a prostitute, 10 beans; a turkey, a whopping 200 beans; the daily wage of a porter, 100 beans. Cortés quickly realized that the ugly cocoa bean had the economic clout of gold.

As he learned the customs of the region, Cortés also discovered that, far from being in a savage wilderness, he was on the edge of a vast empire that included millions of people from many tribes, each with its own language and customs. The centrepiece of this empire was the capital city on a mountain plateau located more than two hundred kilometres from Vera Cruz. The land between was hostile to foreigners, and the aggressive Indian warriors had fighting skills and tactics that were unfamiliar even to veterans of the dirty wars with the Muslim Moors. But the local people were also traders with a high level of political sophistication. They were formidable warriors who were also peacemakers amenable to treaties and arrangements that would advance mutual interests. Cortés soon learned from the natives that there was tremendous discontent with Montezuma and that many of the regions were anxious to be liberated from the grip of Tenochtitlán. Cortés said he could oblige them. And he sent word that he wanted to meet the great emperor.

Reports of the arrival of extraordinary-looking white men reached Tenochtitlán quickly. It wasn't long before Montezuma's agents were in Vera Cruz to investigate the strangers and the ships that looked like floating houses with wings. Ever mindful of the prophecy, the emperor wanted to know what these strangers looked like. He instructed his agents to produce drawings of Cortés and his men, their horses and their heavy weapons. When Montezuma's royal court saw the images, they were impressed by the cannon, but were staggered by the drawings of the Spaniards' sixteen horses—creatures they had never before seen.

Cortés had only about a thousand men, so the pictures exaggerated his power. But the ultimate impact of the drawings had little to do with conventional military assets. The images set before the great Montezuma played perfectly into the Quetzalcoatl prediction—that white men with beards would come to take their rightful place on the throne. For the Aztecs, the superstition was in the order of the second coming of the Messiah in Christian doctrine.

There had been disturbing portents that the fulfillment of the prophecy was near at hand. The new deities were expected to arrive at the end of a fifty-two-year cycle. The year 1519 marked the end of such a period. A series of natural disasters, coupled with repeated apparitions—the most frightening were reports of a faceless woman who had begun to appear at water wells—added to the foreboding. Montezuma and his court advisors were almost paralyzed by news of the visitors. After much consultation with his priests and his generals, the emperor concluded that it was pointless to resist. The newcomers were supernatural beings. To fight them would be futile. Yet even gods are vulnerable to flattery and gifts, and Montezuma dispatched an entourage that included one hundred slaves to carry the gifts he hoped would appease the aliens and send them home happy.

In his better days, Montezuma might have been less vulnerable, less likely to fold before the imaginary menace of an exposed and relatively weak intruder. But the increasingly arrogant and reclusive Aztec king was out of touch with both his empire and reality. Hernán Cortés, for his part, was a cunning and conniving manipulator. Back at his base camp in Vera Cruz, he accepted the gifts and listened patiently as Montezuma's emissaries explained that there could be no audience. Cortés then told them to return to the great man and convey the message that he had no intention of leaving without personally paying his respects and those of the king of Spain, whom he represented. With or without a formal invitation, he was going to drop in on Montezuma.

By Easter week of 1519, the conquistadors were ready to set off on their long trek to Tenochtitlán. Cortés delivered a pep talk calculated to inspire his men, whose basic instincts he well understood: “I hold out to you a glorious prize, but it is to be won by incessant toil. Great things are achieved only by great exertions and glory was never the reward of sloth. If I have laboured hard and staked my all on this undertaking, it is for the love of that renown, which is the noblest recompense of man. But, if any among you covet riches more, be but true to me, as I will be true to you and to the occasion, and I will make you masters of such as our countrymen have never dreamed of!”

For many months after they set off, the conquistadors were obliged to fight their way past Aztec loyalists, and by the time they had reached the Mexican plateau, almost every conquistador had been wounded at least twice. Even with the support of Montezuma's enemies, Cortés lost many of his soldiers in the fighting and also to the rigours of the debilitating tropical climate. The rainforests of Mexico and Central America are hospitable to poisonous snakes and reptiles as well as disease-bearing insects. There were several near-mutinies. These were soldiers of fortune, not disciplined fighters, here for plunder not for military valour, and so far they had nothing to show for their risks and exertions.

Luckily for Cortés, the army also included veterans of the fierce campaigns against the Moors, who had an uncompromising sense of warfare, none more so than Cortés's sadistic chief lieutenant, Pedro de Alvarado. He had, among other soldierly assets, a keen appreciation of the usefulness of torture. Intransigent groups of natives soon yielded to his skills, and the conquistadors slowly advanced towards the capital. Few native populations blocked the army's way for long, wilting before the cruelty of the Spaniards. But also, as Cortés had suspected, many of the tribes willingly joined his campaign, assuming that the contest was already decided in favour of the Spaniards.

For all their skills at warfare and their mastery of terrorism, the Spaniards were awestruck when they first set eyes on Tenochtitlán, shimmering in the distance. Could heathens have really built a city of such splendour? Cortés, and what was left of his forces, finally arrived at the Aztec capital on November 19, 1519. The achievement of simply getting there seemed sufficient to persuade Montezuma that, indeed, these Spaniards were possessed of godly power. He couldn't have been more mistaken about this motley crew of self-interested mercenaries.

Cortés, as the first European to stride into the heart of the Aztec empire, was at once both awed and alarmed by what he encountered inside its gates. He found a city of over 300,000 people, rivalling anything in Europe at the time. The island plateau habitat rose like an apparition before them, magnificent beyond compare. As Cortés describes it in colourful letters back to King Charles, he was met at the gates of the fortification by a thousand men, “all dressed richly after their own fashion.” After he crossed the main bridge, “Montezuma came to greet us and with him were some two hundred lords, all barefoot and dressed in different costumes.” Montezuma was the only noble wearing sandals.

Cortés was on horseback, which obviously enhanced the power of his presence. Since no one had never seen a horse before, the
more impressionable might have thought at first glance that horse and rider were one. Cortés dismounted, walked towards Montezuma and, to the astonishment of all around, embraced the emperor though he'd been told it was strictly forbidden to touch him. Protocol required that he kneel before Montezuma and kiss the earth at his feet. Cortés, from the beginning, would make it clear that the world of the Aztec people was about to change dramatically.

The conquistadors could see from the size of the population and the potential fighting power of the throng surrounding Montezuma that, with or without horsemen, they were no match for the Aztecs. But to their surprise and obvious relief, Montezuma invited Cortés to enter his palace. There he pledged homage to Spain, declaring that his kingdom properly belonged to the white men. Cortés took Montezuma at his word and promptly placed him under house arrest.

Such an act of breathtaking arrogance was made possible by a convergence of tragically mistaken assumptions: that it was the destiny of the Aztecs to be ruled by godlike white men; and that it was the divine mission of the Spaniards to conquer and convert as much of the world as they could lay their hands on. Montezuma and his people were doomed by the emperor's pessimistic piety. And so, with the backing of fewer than a thousand men, the renegade Cortés defeated an indigenous nation of millions led by the most feared and ruthless figure in the Americas. Montezuma quickly submitted, converted to Christianity and deferred decision-making to his captors. The Spaniards decided to keep him nearby as a figurehead and to maintain the illusion that he was really still in charge. But not for long.

Cortés continued to send back glowing tributes to the king of Spain and to inform him of all his wonderful accomplishments, including his control over cocoa production. Cortés saw cocoa not as the essence of a dubiously scummy beverage, but as currency,
reserving any gold he obtained for the king and, of course, for himself.

Metals such as gold and silver were so plentiful in Mexico that they were used by the Aztecs for decoration, not for money. The conquistadors, for their part, told the Indians that they suffered from an illness that required large amounts of gold to heal, and went so far as to claim that they ate gold. Here was the supreme irony: the conquistadors hoarded what they considered of value—gold—while the Aztecs hoarded cocoa. Montezuma's beans were crammed into vast storehouses, secured in a kind of chocolate Fort Knox.

The city of Tenochtitlán genuinely fascinated Cortés: “I cannot describe one hundredth part of all the things which could be mentioned,” he wrote to King Charles, before going on to paint a picture of a truly great habitation. He described markets piled high with exotic goods, food stalls, barber shops, herbalists, couturiers and weavers. There was even an organized and publicly supported market police force whose job it was to make sure all transactions were conducted according to the law. Cortés wrote of temples, palaces and grand houses, all built with stone and fine woodwork: “Yet so as not to tire Your Highness with the description of this city … I will say only that these people live almost like those of Spain, and in much harmony and order as there, and considering that they are barbarous and so far from the knowledge of God and cut off from all civilized nations, it is truly remarkable to see what they have achieved in all things.”

The Spaniards would soon help put an end to all that.

Cortés's betrayal of his former boss, Velasquez, came back to haunt him. The governor sent out a party to arrest the wayward conquistadors, compelling Cortés to return to Vera Cruz and confront the soldiers dispatched from Cuba. By the time Cortés
had defeated Velasquez's force—or co-opted them by offering to share the gold—and returned to Tenochtitlán, he had lost control of the Aztec capital.