Another book hamstrung by being written in 1959; this was the 2006 edition and while I’m happy to give a 1959 edition 5 stars, 50 years later it’d be nice to update some of the commentary as well as add more translations.

Okay so: This is a collection of (largely) primary source documents written in (mostly) Nahuatl by (primarily) central Mexican authors about the conquest of central Mexico, ~1519-1522. There’s a short history of the Aztecs at the beginning and some post-conquest documents in Nahuatl at the end.

It’s great, and a very clear look at a literate society that lost/was absorbed into another culture; it helped highlight the specific turning points in 1519-21 where history could very easily have gone a different route.

Unfortunately because Leon-Portilla initially wrote it in 1959, it comes from very early postcolonialist theory, and makes a lot of very limited assumptions about why the Mexica etc acted that way, wrote these things, etc. Big example: Taking the writers of the Florentine Codex at their word when they say that Moctezuma thought the Spaniards were gods/representatives of gods and was honoring them when he sent them tribute. Which is like…such a loaded exchange, written down at least 40 years after the fact, by highly educated survivors of a catastrophic defeat and with a Franciscan friar overlooking the writing…

Again, fine analysis for 1959 but there have been some developments in postcolonial theory in the last 50 years! Leon-Portilla added several post-conquest documents to the new edition but did not otherwise update his commentary?