In November 1519, Hernando Cortés walked along a causeway leading to
the capital of the Aztec kingdom and came face to face with
Moctezuma. That story--and the story of what happened afterwards--has
been told many times, but always following the narrative offered by
the Spaniards. After all, we have been taught, it was the Europeans
who held the pens. But the Native Americans were intrigued by the
Roman alphabet and, unbeknownst to the newcomers, they used it to
write detailed histories in their own language of Nahuatl. Until
recently, these sources remained obscure, only partially translated,
and rarely consulted by scholars.
For the first time, in Fifth Sun, the history of the Aztecs is
offered in all its complexity based solely on the texts written by
the indigenous people themselves. Camilla Townsend presents an
accessible and humanized depiction of these native Mexicans, rather
than seeing them as the exotic, bloody figures of European
stereotypes. The conquest, in this work, is neither an apocalyptic
moment, nor an origin story launching Mexicans into existence. The
Mexica people had a history of their own long before the Europeans
arrived and did not simply capitulate to Spanish culture and
colonization. Instead, they realigned their political allegiances,
accommodated new obligations, adopted new technologies, and endured.
This engaging revisionist history of the Aztecs, told through their
own words, explores the experience of a once-powerful people facing
the trauma of conquest and finding ways to survive, offering an
empathetic interpretation for experts and non-specialists alike.