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The name Aztec conjures up many images, such as captives having their hearts torn from their chests to satisfy the gods. Without these sacrifices, the Aztecs believed, the gods would die, and the world would end; hence the stories of sacred rites in which each year thousands of people captured in war were led up temple pyramids in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, where their hearts were used to feed the gods. This insatiable demand of the gods drove the Aztecs toward war, and the very fate of the world depended on their success. But probably the most striking popular image is that of the confrontation between the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés and the Aztec king Moteuczomah Xocoyotl (popularly known as Montezuma). These men embodied the clash of two cultures that were different in customs, practices, beliefs, and technologies, and the resulting conquest was unquestionably one of history's great military exploits. A few hundred Spaniards, helped by Indian allies, succeeded in reducing the imperial city of Tenochtitlan to rubble, destroying its rulers and elites and subjecting its people to forced labor, social and political subordination, and economic peonage. |
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The Spanish conquest of Mexico was indeed a feat of incredible daring, military prowess, and political skill. And though what most of us know of Aztec culture is what the conquistadors saw, it was only the tip of the historical iceberg. When Cortés arrived, the Aztecs had lived in central Mexico for only a few hundred years and had been its dominant power for only a century. Yet their vast armies had marched on campaigns stretching hundreds of miles to meet, fight, and subdue competing states and cultures, and they had performed feats of daring in battle and exercised astute political control |
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