London Mayor hails Conquest of Mexico
Tue, Sep 29, 2009
The Aztec Sun Stone: A feat of ancient calendrics
The London mayor, Boris Johnson, recently penned a rather misinformed and frivolous article on Aztec civilisation where he justified the conquest of Mexico on moral grounds. I found it rather grotesque, so I wrote a response to it.
See the original Johnson article here, published by the Daily Telegraph.
My reponse:
“… Oh dear. It seems we have a raving imperialist for London Mayor. This is a cheap little article, well-written, rigorously ignorant, and utterly devoid of intellectual honesty.
Good work, Mr Johnson, once again you’ve managed to brilliantly capture the grotesque, self-important certitude I’ve come to expect from politicians and overpaid writers who have nothing to say.
What a staggering piece of narcissism – you should really take a look in the mirror… and congratulate yourself.
You would have been right at home during the brutal days of New Spain’s first audencia, when the genocide of Mexico was well underway. Oh the torture, the murder, the rape! We showed them how to do it! A real victory for moral authority!
What a tawdry work of propaganda.
Mr Johnson calls the Aztecs less than stone age when the Spanish conquistadors, who dismantled their civilisation piece by piece, are known to have greatly marvelled at the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan – more resplendent, they said, than anything they’d seen in Europe or the Orient.
The Aztecs did not have the wheel, says Mr Johnson. He is correct. Their ancestors had invented it thousands of years previously, and discovered there was little use for such a device in the rugged mountains and jungles of Mexico.
The Aztecs did not have writing, says Mr Johnson. This is another fallacious assertion. The Aztecs were famed poets and writers, well-known for their epic tomes and their fantastic, lyrical exploitation of the Nahutl language. Flower and song, it’s called, and it formed a major part of Aztec cultural life.
Mr Johnson should know that Aztec civilisation was born out of thousands of years of human evolution. They and their predecessors had writing, astronomy, mathematics, architecture and literature to rival – in some cases exceed – contiguous developments in Europe. A shame the Spaniards torched the libraries. There would have been much to learn.
Although the figures are disputed, the Aztec appetite for human sacrifice is not a fresh revelation. And it’s not a very original justification for the Conquest either. This is an old Spanish idea that belongs, along with Mr Johnson, hundreds of years in the past. Just try to get past your high-blown, ethnocentric views.
Among the Aztecs, human sacrifice had a deep religious significance. To be selected for it was considered one of the greatest possible honours. Many went happily to the slab, just as today, many happily march to death on the battlefield just as soon as some inglorious ape foists up the Union Jack.
But of course, Mr Johnson is an enlightened and educated man. A civilised man. He knows all this. He’s merely engaging in frivolous, self-seeking controversies. He may not have got much further than the British museum press release, but he does know how to blow his own trumpet – and that counts for something.
At least let’s hope so, because he’s now the most powerful man in London… Mr Johnson, perhaps you’d like to join me on my next trip to the Amazonian rainforest? I plan to tame the primitives and unfurl the banner of New Right conservatism. You know, they still eat each other out there – and shrink peoples’ heads – I think you would really like them, Mr Johnson…”
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Tags: Aztec, genocide, Johnson, London, Tenochtitlan
Many thanks for your informed comment on the boris johnson website. I can understand your specialist perspective and I can also understand that what Boris was trying to convey in the article was amazement at this rich culture deep in Central America and commending the Moctezuma Exhibition at the British Museum to the British Public so that they could explore and see for themselves some of the marvellous ancient relics of that civilisation and to try and understand their culture.
Webmaster, http://www.boris-johnson.com
Dear Interamerican,
How very very cruel.
BoJo is an endangered species and therefor merits protected status as prescribed by The WWF.
One day Boris will merit an exhibition of his own at the British Museum and we will have much to learn.
His exhibition will include his shrunken head complete with buttery thatch,his velocipede and protective equipment beloved by eco-pillocks and one of his testicles dried and sculpted into a miniature of The London Assembly building.
Boris is a man of many parts, some of which are still working. So don’t write him off just yet, he has years of offence still to offer.
Long Live BoJo
Hi Melissa,
Thanks for your response, which was greatly appreciated. I do realise that Boris is doing a good job in promoting the new Moctezuma exhibition at the British museum, and he should be commended for that.
But I also find his argument for colonialism slightly distasteful. The conquest of Mexico was an act of genocide that wiped out 90% of the population – Aztecs, Tarascans, Mayans, Zapotecs, Mixtecs, and countless Nahua tribes among them. No one was spared.
And so the great drama that had been playing out in the Americas, wholly isolated for tens of thousands of years, was suddenly and terminally interrupted.
So it goes.
But back to Mr Johnson’s main point. The issue of human sacrifice is an emotive one because it offends our morality and clearly doesn’t belong in our culture.
Yet in Central America, human sacrifice had been practised for thousands of years prior to Spanish arrival. The locals would not have thought much of a sacrificial victim getting his heart torn out on a public altar. This was normal. This was every day.
And it’s nothing to do with a society gone mad – just different ideas about life and death.
It’s easy to label the Aztecs blood-thirsty savages who deserved everything they got. Much harder – and more interesting – to try and justify them. Suspending our prejudices and looking beyond our own cultural values is a worthy, human challenge. It easily beats ‘commonsense’ interpretations.
As Boris rightly says, everyone should get out to the British museum and make up their own minds. So thanks for provoking some thought in the mean time.
Cheers,
Richard
Hello Mr Johns,
Of course, politics would be a less interesting arena without the contributions of Boris Johnson. As you say, he is a bright young man with much to offer, especially in the way of clowning.
Like you, I look forward to his incarceration in the British Museum as an object of curiosity. His shrunken testicle, worked into the form of a major London landmark (isn’t that Ken’s bollock he’s emulating?), will surely be boon for city tourism.
Thanks for your comment.